[Python-Dev] Revert #12085 fix for __del__ attribute error message

[MRAB]

On 24/09/2013 09:06, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> On 24 September 2013 17:34, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, 24 Sep 2013 17:25:10 +1000
>> Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> You are setting the bar unreasonably high for an error message that
>>> has to convey a complex concept in as few words as possible. There is
>>> *NO* wording that can concisely express the concepts involved without
>>> resorting to jargon, because the concepts behind it are *complex and
>>> unintuitive*. The current wording is flat out wrong, because the
>>> exception isn't being ignored, it's being printed to stderr. If it was
>>> genuinely being ignored, people wouldn't complain about it.
>>>
>>> Jargon that can be easily looked up with a search engine is greatly
>>> superior to a message that is simply wrong, as the former provides a
>>> gateway to understanding, just like coming across a word you don't
>>> understand when reading a novel.
>>
>> "Unraisable" is not a word I don't understand, it's a word that I
>> understand and which conveys the wrong meaning.
>
> How is it wrong? At the point where the interpreter says "This
> exception is now unraisable", what, precisely, is it saying that is
> wrong?
>
> It isn't saying "this has never been raised". It is saying, "where it
> is currently being processed, this exception cannot be raised".
>
>> If you want something that people won't understand, you can use
>> something like "asynchronous exception".
>
> Asynchronous exception is *even more* wrong, because that's the
> terminology used for an exception injected into the current thread by
> a different thread.
>
>>> Preferring the status quo because
>>> you're holding out a forlorn hope for a concise wording that explains:
>>
>> I've proposed other options.
>
> "Automatically caught" says nothing about why the exception is being
> printed to stderr instead of propagating normally. Exceptions are
> automatically caught by any matching except clause all the time, but
> most of those don't result in errors printed to stderr.
>
Why not just say something like "Cannot propagate exception..."; it's
simpler than "Unpropagatable exception...".