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Sourcery Documentation

Do Not Use Bare Except

Do Not Use Bare Except¶

Sourcery suggestion id: `do-not-use-bare-except`¶

Description¶

Use except: Exception rather than bare except

Before¶

try:
    some_important_code()
except:
    exception_handling_code()

After¶

try:
    some_important_code()
except Exception:
    exception_handling_code()

Explanation¶

PEP 8 recommends that we should avoid catching exceptions using a bare except clause.

The problem with these is that they catch SystemExit and KeyboardInterrupt exceptions, which makes it harder to interrupt a program using CTRL+C, and can also disguise other problems.

The PEP recommends catching Exception, which will catch all program errors, so that is what Sourcery suggests. Note that this suggestion does not trigger if the exception handler ends by raising the original exception.