Question

I want to catch a Python exception and print it rather than re-raising it. For example:

def f(x):
    try:
        return 1/x
    except:
        print <exception_that_was_raised>   

This should then do:

>>> f(0)
'ZeroDivisionError'

without an exception being raised.

Is there a way to do this, other than listing each possible exception in a giant try-except-except…except clause?

Answer 1

use the message attribute of exception or e.__class__.__name__ if you want the name of the Base exception class , i.e ZeroDivisionError' in your case

In [30]: def f(x):
        try:
                return 1/x
        except Exception as e:
            print e.message
   ....:         

In [31]: f(2)
Out[31]: 0

In [32]: f(0)
integer division or modulo by zero

In python 3.x the message attribute has been removed so you can simply use print(e) or e.args[0] there, and e.__class__.__name__ remains same.