[Python-Dev] Revert #12085 fix for del attribute error message (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Mon Sep 23 05:24:56 CEST 2013

On 23 Sep 2013 06:38, "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

On 9/22/2013 2:41 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu_ _<mailto:tjreedy at udel.edu>> wrote: On 9/21/2013 10:30 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote: Exceptions in del point to bugs (sometimes in the stdlib) that should be fixed, period. The only reason they do not result in exceptions that are properly bubbled up and catchable is because del is called from a DECREF macro which has no return value.

That is clear enough. What fooled me is the word 'ignored', in both the doc and message. How about 'skipped' (for technical reasons)? That's a good point, although I'm not sure 'skipped' is better. Only slightly ;-). The problem with both words is that they try to say two things. What happened, and what Python did about it. Maybe use a more neutral verb like 'occurred'? "Exception occurred in ..." is even better at say what happened. I think we should then add an explict statement as to what Python did, and hint at what the user should do, something like "Although caught internally, it still indicates a problem."

Brevity is still a virtue. The relevant C API function is called "PyErr_WriteUnraisable", so just starting the message as something like "Unraisable exception suppressed in..." might work.

Cheers, Nick.

Otherwise, when no other output follows, as in ... > del c Exception ocurred in: <bound method C._del_ ..._ _Traceback (most recent call last):_ _File "<pyshell#0>", line 2, in del AttributeError: >>> It may not be completely obvious to a non-expert that the traceback is not a 'real' traceback from an exception that was allowed to propagate, and that it did not stop execution and cannot be caught.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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