[XML-SIG] Re: SAX exceptions are odd

[Martin v. Loewis]

> What tools are there that depend on the string representation of the
> exception object raised by a Python library?

None at the moment (although I wish Emacs would recognize these
strings - it would with a slight change).

When Python 2.1 will be released, it is quite possible that tools
might rely on that - at which time it won't be possible anymore to
change the string. At the moment, it still is.

> It would be bad form for an external program to depend in some way on
> the error messages Python prints.  There is definitely no guarantee
> that they will remain unchanged from version to version.

The external programs may have no other option - stdin/stdout/sterr is
the typical way of communicating with a program.

Nobody would try to parse a genuine Python traceback, as that often is
a bug in the script. However, SAX exceptions are raised for errors in
the XML, so this is different.

Regards,
Martin