[Python-Dev] Bare except clauses in PEP 348 (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum gvanrossum at gmail.com
Wed Aug 24 17:10:37 CEST 2005

On 8/24/05, Michael Chermside <mcherm at mcherm.com> wrote:

Explicit is better than Implicit. I think that in newly written code "except Exception:" is better (more explicit and easier to understand) than "except:" Legacy code that uses "except:" can remain unchanged IF the meaning of "except:" is unchanged... but I think we all agree that this is unwise because the existing meaning is a tempting trap for the unwary. So I don't see any advantage to keeping bare "except:" in the long run. What we do to ease the transition is a different question, but one more easily resolved.

OK, I'm convinced. Let's drop bare except for Python 3.0, and deprecate them until then, without changing the meaning.

The deprecation message (to be generated by the compiler!) should steer people in the direction of specifying one particular exception (e.g. KeyError etc.) rather than Exception.

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/

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