[Python-Dev] Attribute error: providing type name (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Tue Dec 2 00:10:57 CET 2008

Alex Martelli wrote:

I wonder if there's some desiderata left for future Python versions to make this standard behavior easier (for C-coded, Python-coded, and Cython-coded classes, ones made by SWIG, etc) without too much black magic...

I think the standard exception hierarchy should grow additional standard fields. E.g. AttributeError should have attributes 'type','name', or perhaps even 'object','name'. TypeError should have attributes 'expected', 'actual' (or, again, 'expected', 'object'). Also, some languages support nested exceptions (attribute 'inner'); usefulness of this concept should be reviewed.

And so on - that might produce quite a large PEP. As 3.0 missed the chance to fix this, compatibility is also an issue. It might be possible to overload exception constructors on the number of parameters, or using keyword parameters for the new way of filling the exception.

And no, I don't volunteer to write this PEP :-)

Regards, Martin

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