How to read and post tracebacks (was Registry Key Value Help)

[Roy Smith]

In article <mailman.4826.1388721841.18130.python-list at python.org>,
 Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 2:58 PM, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why not write up a few lines on "How to read and post python tracebacks"
> > and post it on the wiki?
> 
> You mean "copy and paste the whole output"? I'm not sure what more
> needs to be said about posting them.
> 
> Reading them is a bit more complicated, but possibly _too_ complicated
> for a simple wiki post. Being able to quickly eyeball a traceback and
> know which level to look for the problem at is part of the skill of
> debugging, and it usually requires that you know the codebase fairly
> well too. Though even with unfamiliar code, it's possible to figure a
> lot out by naming conventions, which is why they're so important (all
> uppercase meaning "constant" and normally a scalar - so useful).
> 
> ChrisA

One of the things I dislike about Python stack dumps is the alternation 
between lines of file locations and source code snippets.  Cognitively, 
jumping back and forth makes it more difficult to understand than it has 
to be.

They would be much easier to read (IMHO) if each stack frame took one 
line.  Sure, the lines would be longer, but I can easily get 300 columns 
of text on my laptop screen and still read it easily with my 
50-something eyes.

Yeah, yeah, I know, we're still living in an 80-column world.