Catching all exceptions is sometimes used as a crutch by programmers who can’t remember all of the possible exceptions that might occur in complicated operations. As such, it is also a very good way to write undebuggable code.
Because of this, if one catches all exceptions, it is absolutely critical to log or reports the actual reason for the exception somewhere (e.g., log file, error message printed to screen, etc.).
Problem – Code that catches all the exceptions
try: ... except Exception as e: ... # Important log('Reason:', e) |
This will catch all exceptions save SystemExit, KeyboardInterrupt, and GeneratorExit.
Code #2 : Considering the example.
def parse_int(s): try: n = int(v) except Exception: print("Couldn't parse") |
Code #3 : Using the above function
print (parse_int('n / a'), "\n") print (parse_int('42')) |
Output :
Couldn't parse Couldn't parse
At this point, the question arises how it doesn’t work. Now if the function had been written as:
Code #4 :
def parse_int(s): try: n = int(v) except Exception as e: print("Couldn't parse") print('Reason:', e) |
In this case, the following output will be received, which indicates that a programming mistake has been made.
parse_int('42') |
Output :
Couldn't parse Reason: global name 'v' is not defined
Problem – To wrap lower-level exceptions with custom ones that have more meaning in the context of the application (one is working on).
To create new exceptions just define them as classes that inherit from Exception (or one of the other existing exception types if it makes more sense).
Code #5 : Defining some custom exceptions
class NetworkError(Exception): passclass HostnameError(NetworkError): passclass TimeoutError(NetworkError): passclass ProtocolError(NetworkError): pass |
Code #6 : Using these exceptions in the normal way.
try: msg = s.recv() except TimeoutError as e: ... except ProtocolError as e: ... |
- Custom exception classes should almost always inherit from the built-in Exception class, or inherit from some locally defined base exception that itself inherits from Exception.
- BaseException is reserved for system-exiting exceptions, such as KeyboardInterrupt or SystemExit, and other exceptions that should signal the application to exit. Therefore, catching these exceptions is not the intended use case.
