can error messages be improved or can they be overridden ?

[Terry Reedy]

Stef Mientki wrote:
> thanks Ron,
> 
> but I was looking for a more general solution,
> in which I don't change the program itself,
> and where the error messages (in general) become more informative than 
> it is by default.

Improving error messages is an ongoing project.  I submitted feature request
http://bugs.python.org/issue5353
Improve IndexError messages with actual values

We can only hope someone will get 'bugged' to write a patch.

Terry