Checking for an exception

[mbyrnepr2 at gmail.com]

On Saturday, June 24, 2017 at 11:31:11 AM UTC+1, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
> What's the right/best way to test whether an object is an exception ahead of
> time? (That is, without trying to raise from it.)
> 
> I have:
> 
> return (isinstance(obj, type) and issubclass(obj, BaseException)
>         or isinstance(obj, BaseException))
> 
> 
> Any better ideas?
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Steve
> “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
> enough, things got worse.

Would something along these lines help?

import exceptions

if 'ArithmeticError' in dir(exceptions):
    print 'is an exception'

try:
    if exceptions.__getattribute__('ArithmeticError'):
        print 'is an exception'
except AttributeError:
    print 'is not an exception'

try:
    getattr(exceptions, 'ArithmeticError')
    print 'is not an exception'
except AttributeError:
    print 'is not an exception'