Catching error text like that shown in console?

[Larry Bates]

Peter A. Schott wrote:
> I know there's got to be an easy way to do this - I want a way to catch the
> error text that would normally be shown in an interactive session and put that
> value into a string I can use later.  I've tried just using a catch statement
> and trying to convert the output to string, but this doesn't always work.  I
> really don't have programs complex enough to do a lot of specific catching at
> this point - I just want to know:
>   1. something failed
>   2. here's the error output/traceback
> 
> Anyone know how I can do this or if it's possible?  Didn't find anything doing a
> search so I figured I'd hit up the experts.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -Pete Schott

1. Create a function to be run when an exception happens.

def excepthook(self, type, value, tb):
    #
    # This function allows the user to redefine what happens if the program
    # aborts due to an uncaught exception.
    import traceback
    #
    # Get traceback lines and append the current session log
    #
    tblines=traceback.format_exception(type, value, tb)
    #
    # Print these lines somewhere.  Normally you would log to a file
    #
    print "traceback exception encountered"
    print "--------------------Begin traceback lines-------------------------"
    print tblines
    print "--------------------End traceback lines---------------------------")
    map(sys.stdout.writelines, tblines)  # Always write exceptions to screen
    sys.exit(2)

2. Tell python you want to call this function when exception occurs.

sys.excepthook=exceptHandler