Catching exceptions from Python 2.4 to 3.x

[Steven D'Aprano]

Oh for the day I can drop support for Python 2.4 and 2.5... 


I have some code that needs to run in any version of Python from 2.4 
onwards. Yes, it must be a single code base.

I wish to catch an exception and bind the exception to a name.

In Python 2.6 onwards, I can do:

try:
    something()
except Exception as err:
    process(err)

But in 2.4 and 2.5 "as err" gives me a SyntaxError, and I have to write:

try:
    something()
except Exception, err:
    process(err)


Is there some other trick to grab the current exception from inside an 
except block?


-- 
Steven