Question

I have a python application that communicates with a PHP application.
Right now, I have defined error codes on both sides so they match (i.e. we can detect the python-side failures in PHP and react accordingly).

My problem comes from python being an interpreted language, here is why :
If the code has a syntax problem, then the interpreter will return error codes.
But these interpreter error codes will be indistinguishable from the application errors.

I am not in charge of the python code, but I was asked to be able to detect eventual python interpreter failures so I can notify the end user using PHP.

Because of that, I need to find a list of the interpreter return codes when malfunctionning.
I failed to find this information on both google, python doc, and man page.

Does anybody have/know where to find this information ?
(also, if you have any other ideas on how to get around this problem, I’d be happy to hear them)

Thanks in advance !

Answer 1

The best solution would be setting an exception hook that always exits with a certain code.

import sys
def excepthook(type, value, traceback):
    sys.exit(X) # X is your exit code
sys.excepthook = excepthook

Syntax errors should be irrelevant – why would you ever put a script that contains syntax errors in production?

But anyway, Python always exits with a non-zero code (apparently always 1) in case of an uncaught exception and 0 if everything went fine.