Getting error message/trace over the C API

[Sami Vaisanen]

Hello group,
 
I'm writing a C++ based application that embeds the python engine. Now I
have a problem regarding exception/error information. Is there a way to
get the exception message and possibly the traceback into a string for
example? I've been eyeballing the PyErr_ module and it seems fairly
limited. In other words PyErr_Print() calls the right functions for
getting the exception information but unfortunately it is hardwired to
print this data directly into sys.stderr, and for an embedded application
this is completely inappropriate. 
 
I have seen solutions that propose writing a custom Python class with
write method and using that to grab the output from sys.stderr and then
saving the data for example into a variable for later access, but unless
Im mistaken this solution (not only that it is extremely ugly) is not
thread safe. Even if a thread in my application is holding GIL, the lock
can be released by extensions/the interpreter and thus opens up a race
condition regarding that grabber object. 
 
Please advice how to do this.

-sami