[Python-ideas] Arguments to exceptions

[Nick Coghlan]

On 7 July 2017 at 12:18, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> By contrast, we're incredibly wary of trying to enhance exception
> behaviour by way of `BaseException` changes due to our past negative
> experiences with that during the original implementation of PEP 352:
> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0352/#retracted-ideas
>
> In principle, such approaches sound great. In practice, they tend to
> fall apart once they try to cope with the way CPython's internals (as
> opposed to user level Python code) creates and manipulates exceptions.

To elaborate on the potential problem with the specific proposal in
this thread: adding arbitrary kwargs support to BaseException would be
straightforward. Adding arbitrary kwargs support to the dozens of
exceptions defined as builtins and in the standard library would *not*
necessarily be straightforward, *and* would potentially get in the way
of adding more clearly defined attributes to particular subclasses in
the future. It would also create potential inconsistencies with third
party exceptions which may or may not start accepting arbitrary
keywords depending on how they're defined.

As a result, our advice is to *avoid* trying to come up with systemic
fixes for structured exception handling, and instead focus on specific
use cases of "I want *this* exception type to have *that* attribute
for *these* reasons". Those kinds of proposals usually don't even rise
to the level of needing a PEP - they're just normal RFEs on the issue
tracker.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia