Question

In Python, what’s the best way to catch “all” exceptions?

except: # do stuff with sys.exc_info()[1]

except BaseException as exc:

except Exception as exc:

The catch may be executing in a thread.

My aim is to log any exception that might be thrown by normal code without masking any special Python exceptions, such as those that indicate process termination etc.

Getting a handle to the exception (such as by the clauses above that contain exc) is also desirable.

Answer 1

If you need to catch all exceptions and do the same stuff for all, I’ll suggest you this :

try:
   #stuff
except:
   # do some stuff

If you don’t want to mask “special” python exceptions, use the Exception base class

try:
   #stuff
except Exception:
   # do some stuff

for some exceptions related management, catch them explicitly :

try:
   #stuff
except FirstExceptionBaseClassYouWantToCatch as exc:
   # do some stuff
except SecondExceptionBaseClassYouWantToCatch as exc:
   # do some other stuff based
except (ThirdExceptionBaseClassYouWantToCatch, FourthExceptionBaseClassYouWantToCatch) as exc:
   # do some other stuff based

The exception hierarchy from the python docs should be a usefull reading.