Ok from what I see, catching that exception is quite natural and shouldn't be harmful. Once every while, there isn't anything new on the server to pull and so data
is an empty string. However, a clearer way to do this might be (also, I took liberty of rewriting some of your code and I'm assuming the last block of your code is also inside while True):
#It's good practice to define functions first, too keep definitions in one place
def queuetimer(): #function for resetting the queue every 30 seconds
global queue
print 'queue reset'
queue = 0
threading.Timer(30,queuetimer).start()
def message(msg): #function for sending messages to the IRC chat
global queue
queue = queue + 1
print queue
if queue < 20: #ensures does not send >20 msgs per 30 seconds.
irc.send('PRIVMSG ' + channel + ' :' + msg + '\r\n')
else:
print 'Message deleted'
def socialtimer(): #function for announcing social
global ntimer
z = open('E:\mIRC\Twitter.txt')
SOCIAL = z.read()
message (SOCIAL)
print 'Social Timers Started!'
ntimer = threading.Timer(1200,socialtimer)
ntimer.start()
queue = 0 #sets variable for anti-spam queue functionality
newsmsg = 'whitelist'
irc = socket.socket()
irc.connect((server, 6667)) #connects to the server
#sends variables for connection to twitch chat
irc.send('PASS ' + password + '\r\n')
irc.send('USER ' + nick + ' 0 * :' + bot_owner + '\r\n')
irc.send('NICK ' + nick + '\r\n')
irc.send('JOIN ' + channel + '\r\n')
queuetimer()
while True:
data = irc.recv(1024) #gets output from IRC server, 1024 is a better number than 1204
#make sure data isn't an empty string
if data != '':
user = data.split(':')[1]
user = user.split('!')[0] #determines the sender of the messages
print (data)
else:
print ("Nothing to get from the server")
By the way, correct syntax for try...except
clause is
try:
#do something
except ExceptionName:
#do something else
else:
#do something if no exceptions occurred
finally:
#do something even if an unhandled exception occurs and then rise it
I simply couldn't fit that in my comment. Link to documentation