Built-in Exceptions ******************* In Python, all exceptions must be instances of a class that derives from "BaseException". In a "try" statement with an "except" clause that mentions a particular class, that clause also handles any exception classes derived from that class (but not exception classes from which *it* is derived). Two exception classes that are not related via subclassing are never equivalent, even if they have the same name. The built-in exceptions listed below can be generated by the interpreter or built-in functions. Except where mentioned, they have an "associated value" indicating the detailed cause of the error. This may be a string or a tuple of several items of information (e.g., an error code and a string explaining the code). The associated value is usually passed as arguments to the exception class's constructor. User code can raise built-in exceptions. This can be used to test an exception handler or to report an error condition "just like" the situation in which the interpreter raises the same exception; but beware that there is nothing to prevent user code from raising an inappropriate error. The built-in exception classes can be subclassed to define new exceptions; programmers are encouraged to derive new exceptions from the "Exception" class or one of its subclasses, and not from "BaseException". More information on defining exceptions is available in the Python Tutorial under User-defined Exceptions. Exception context ================= When raising (or re-raising) an exception in an "except" or "finally" clause "__context__" is automatically set to the last exception caught; if the new exception is not handled the traceback that is eventually displayed will include the originating exception(s) and the final exception. When raising a new exception (rather than using a bare "raise" to re- raise the exception currently being handled), the implicit exception context can be supplemented with an explicit cause by using "from" with "raise": raise new_exc from original_exc The expression following "from" must be an exception or "None". It will be set as "__cause__" on the raised exception. Setting "__cause__" also implicitly sets the "__suppress_context__" attribute to "True", so that using "raise new_exc from None" effectively replaces the old exception with the new one for display purposes (e.g. converting "KeyError" to "AttributeError"), while leaving the old exception available in "__context__" for introspection when debugging. The default traceback display code shows these chained exceptions in addition to the traceback for the exception itself. An explicitly chained exception in "__cause__" is always shown when present. An implicitly chained exception in "__context__" is shown only if "__cause__" is "None" and "__suppress_context__" is false. In either case, the exception itself is always shown after any chained exceptions so that the final line of the traceback always shows the last exception that was raised. Inheriting from built-in exceptions =================================== User code can create subclasses that inherit from an exception type. It's recommended to only subclass one exception type at a time to avoid any possible conflicts between how the bases handle the "args" attribute, as well as due to possible memory layout incompatibilities. **CPython implementation detail:** Most built-in exceptions are implemented in C for efficiency, see: Objects/exceptions.c. Some have custom memory layouts which makes it impossible to create a subclass that inherits from multiple exception types. The memory layout of a type is an implementation detail and might change between Python versions, leading to new conflicts in the future. Therefore, it's recommended to avoid subclassing multiple exception types altogether. Base classes ============ The following exceptions are used mostly as base classes for other exceptions. exception BaseException The base class for all built-in exceptions. It is not meant to be directly inherited by user-defined classes (for that, use "Exception"). If "str()" is called on an instance of this class, the representation of the argument(s) to the instance are returned, or the empty string when there were no arguments. args The tuple of arguments given to the exception constructor. Some built-in exceptions (like "OSError") expect a certain number of arguments and assign a special meaning to the elements of this tuple, while others are usually called only with a single string giving an error message. with_traceback(tb) This method sets *tb* as the new traceback for the exception and returns the exception object. It was more commonly used before the exception chaining features of **PEP 3134** became available. The following example shows how we can convert an instance of "SomeException" into an instance of "OtherException" while preserving the traceback. Once raised, the current frame is pushed onto the traceback of the "OtherException", as would have happened to the traceback of the original "SomeException" had we allowed it to propagate to the caller. try: ... except SomeException: tb = sys.exc_info()[2] raise OtherException(...).with_traceback(tb) exception Exception All built-in, non-system-exiting exceptions are derived from this class. All user-defined exceptions should also be derived from this class. exception ArithmeticError The base class for those built-in exceptions that are raised for various arithmetic errors: "OverflowError", "ZeroDivisionError", "FloatingPointError". exception BufferError Raised when a buffer related operation cannot be performed. exception LookupError The base class for the exceptions that are raised when a key or index used on a mapping or sequence is invalid: "IndexError", "KeyError". This can be raised directly by "codecs.lookup()". Concrete exceptions =================== The following exceptions are the exceptions that are usually raised. exception AssertionError Raised when an "assert" statement fails. exception AttributeError Raised when an attribute reference (see Attribute references) or assignment fails. (When an object does not support attribute references or attribute assignments at all, "TypeError" is raised.) The "name" and "obj" attributes can be set using keyword-only arguments to the constructor. When set they represent the name of the attribute that was attempted to be accessed and the object that was accessed for said attribute, respectively. Changed in version 3.10: Added the "name" and "obj" attributes. exception EOFError Raised when the "input()" function hits an end-of-file condition (EOF) without reading any data. (N.B.: the "io.IOBase.read()" and "io.IOBase.readline()" methods return an empty string when they hit EOF.) exception FloatingPointError Not currently used. exception GeneratorExit Raised when a *generator* or *coroutine* is closed; see "generator.close()" and "coroutine.close()". It directly inherits from "BaseException" instead of "Exception" since it is technically not an error. exception ImportError Raised when the "import" statement has troubles trying to load a module. Also raised when the "from list" in "from ... import" has a name that cannot be found. The "name" and "path" attributes can be set using keyword-only arguments to the constructor. When set they represent the name of the module that was attempted to be imported and the path to any file which triggered the exception, respectively. Changed in version 3.3: Added the "name" and "path" attributes. exception ModuleNotFoundError A subclass of "ImportError" which is raised by "import" when a module could not be located. It is also raised when "None" is found in "sys.modules". New in version 3.6. exception IndexError Raised when a sequence subscript is out of range. (Slice indices are silently truncated to fall in the allowed range; if an index is not an integer, "TypeError" is raised.) exception KeyError Raised when a mapping (dictionary) key is not found in the set of existing keys. exception KeyboardInterrupt Raised when the user hits the interrupt key (normally "Control-C" or "Delete"). During execution, a check for interrupts is made regularly. The exception inherits from "BaseException" so as to not be accidentally caught by code that catches "Exception" and thus prevent the interpreter from exiting. exception MemoryError Raised when an operation runs out of memory but the situation may still be rescued (by deleting some objects). The associated value is a string indicating what kind of (internal) operation ran out of memory. Note that because of the underlying memory management architecture (C's "malloc()" function), the interpreter may not always be able to completely recover from this situation; it nevertheless raises an exception so that a stack traceback can be printed, in case a run-away program was the cause. exception NameError Raised when a local or global name is not found. This applies only to unqualified names. The associated value is an error message that includes the name that could not be found. The "name" attribute can be set using a keyword-only argument to the constructor. When set it represent the name of the variable that was attempted to be accessed. Changed in version 3.10: Added the "name" attribute. exception NotImplementedError This exception is derived from "RuntimeError". In user defined base classes, abstract methods should raise this exception when they require derived classes to override the method, or while the class is being developed to indicate that the real implementation still needs to be added. Note: It should not be used to indicate that an operator or method is not meant to be supported at all -- in that case either leave the operator / method undefined or, if a subclass, set it to "None". Note: "NotImplementedError" and "NotImplemented" are not interchangeable, even though they have similar names and purposes. See "NotImplemented" for details on when to use it. exception OSError([arg]) exception OSError(errno, strerror[, filename[, winerror[, filename2]]]) This exception is raised when a system function returns a system- related error, including I/O failures such as "file not found" or "disk full" (not for illegal argument types or other incidental errors). The second form of the constructor sets the corresponding attributes, described below. The attributes default to "None" if not specified. For backwards compatibility, if three arguments are passed, the "args" attribute contains only a 2-tuple of the first two constructor arguments. The constructor often actually returns a subclass of "OSError", as described in OS exceptions below. The particular subclass depends on the final "errno" value. This behaviour only occurs when constructing "OSError" directly or via an alias, and is not inherited when subclassing. errno A numeric error code from the C variable "errno". winerror Under Windows, this gives you the native Windows error code. The "errno" attribute is then an approximate translation, in POSIX terms, of that native error code. Under Windows, if the *winerror* constructor argument is an integer, the "errno" attribute is determined from the Windows error code, and the *errno* argument is ignored. On other platforms, the *winerror* argument is ignored, and the "winerror" attribute does not exist. strerror The corresponding error message, as provided by the operating system. It is formatted by the C functions "perror()" under POSIX, and "FormatMessage()" under Windows. filename filename2 For exceptions that involve a file system path (such as "open()" or "os.unlink()"), "filename" is the file name passed to the function. For functions that involve two file system paths (such as "os.rename()"), "filename2" corresponds to the second file name passed to the function. Changed in version 3.3: "EnvironmentError", "IOError", "WindowsError", "socket.error", "select.error" and "mmap.error" have been merged into "OSError", and the constructor may return a subclass. Changed in version 3.4: The "filename" attribute is now the original file name passed to the function, instead of the name encoded to or decoded from the *filesystem encoding and error handler*. Also, the *filename2* constructor argument and attribute was added. exception OverflowError Raised when the result of an arithmetic operation is too large to be represented. This cannot occur for integers (which would rather raise "MemoryError" than give up). However, for historical reasons, OverflowError is sometimes raised for integers that are outside a required range. Because of the lack of standardization of floating point exception handling in C, most floating point operations are not checked. exception RecursionError This exception is derived from "RuntimeError". It is raised when the interpreter detects that the maximum recursion depth (see "sys.getrecursionlimit()") is exceeded. New in version 3.5: Previously, a plain "RuntimeError" was raised. exception ReferenceError This exception is raised when a weak reference proxy, created by the "weakref.proxy()" function, is used to access an attribute of the referent after it has been garbage collected. For more information on weak references, see the "weakref" module. exception RuntimeError Raised when an error is detected that doesn't fall in any of the other categories. The associated value is a string indicating what precisely went wrong. exception StopIteration Raised by built-in function "next()" and an *iterator*'s "__next__()" method to signal that there are no further items produced by the iterator. The exception object has a single attribute "value", which is given as an argument when constructing the exception, and defaults to "None". When a *generator* or *coroutine* function returns, a new "StopIteration" instance is raised, and the value returned by the function is used as the "value" parameter to the constructor of the exception. If a generator code directly or indirectly raises "StopIteration", it is converted into a "RuntimeError" (retaining the "StopIteration" as the new exception's cause). Changed in version 3.3: Added "value" attribute and the ability for generator functions to use it to return a value. Changed in version 3.5: Introduced the RuntimeError transformation via "from __future__ import generator_stop", see **PEP 479**. Changed in version 3.7: Enable **PEP 479** for all code by default: a "StopIteration" error raised in a generator is transformed into a "RuntimeError". exception StopAsyncIteration Must be raised by "__anext__()" method of an *asynchronous iterator* object to stop the iteration. New in version 3.5. exception SyntaxError(message, details) Raised when the parser encounters a syntax error. This may occur in an "import" statement, in a call to the built-in functions "compile()", "exec()", or "eval()", or when reading the initial script or standard input (also interactively). The "str()" of the exception instance returns only the error message. Details is a tuple whose members are also available as separate attributes. filename The name of the file the syntax error occurred in. lineno Which line number in the file the error occurred in. This is 1-indexed: the first line in the file has a "lineno" of 1. offset The column in the line where the error occurred. This is 1-indexed: the first character in the line has an "offset" of 1. text The source code text involved in the error. end_lineno Which line number in the file the error occurred ends in. This is 1-indexed: the first line in the file has a "lineno" of 1. end_offset The column in the end line where the error occurred finishes. This is 1-indexed: the first character in the line has an "offset" of 1. For errors in f-string fields, the message is prefixed by "f-string: " and the offsets are offsets in a text constructed from the replacement expression. For example, compiling f'Bad {a b} field' results in this args attribute: ('f-string: ...', ('', 1, 2, '(a b)n', 1, 5)). Changed in version 3.10: Added the "end_lineno" and "end_offset" attributes. exception IndentationError Base class for syntax errors related to incorrect indentation. This is a subclass of "SyntaxError". exception TabError Raised when indentation contains an inconsistent use of tabs and spaces. This is a subclass of "IndentationError". exception SystemError Raised when the interpreter finds an internal error, but the situation does not look so serious to cause it to abandon all hope. The associated value is a string indicating what went wrong (in low-level terms). You should report this to the author or maintainer of your Python interpreter. Be sure to report the version of the Python interpreter ("sys.version"; it is also printed at the start of an interactive Python session), the exact error message (the exception's associated value) and if possible the source of the program that triggered the error. exception SystemExit This exception is raised by the "sys.exit()" function. It inherits from "BaseException" instead of "Exception" so that it is not accidentally caught by code that catches "Exception". This allows the exception to properly propagate up and cause the interpreter to exit. When it is not handled, the Python interpreter exits; no stack traceback is printed. The constructor accepts the same optional argument passed to "sys.exit()". If the value is an integer, it specifies the system exit status (passed to C's "exit()" function); if it is "None", the exit status is zero; if it has another type (such as a string), the object's value is printed and the exit status is one. A call to "sys.exit()" is translated into an exception so that clean-up handlers ("finally" clauses of "try" statements) can be executed, and so that a debugger can execute a script without running the risk of losing control. The "os._exit()" function can be used if it is absolutely positively necessary to exit immediately (for example, in the child process after a call to "os.fork()"). code The exit status or error message that is passed to the constructor. (Defaults to "None".) exception TypeError Raised when an operation or function is applied to an object of inappropriate type. The associated value is a string giving details about the type mismatch. This exception may be raised by user code to indicate that an attempted operation on an object is not supported, and is not meant to be. If an object is meant to support a given operation but has not yet provided an implementation, "NotImplementedError" is the proper exception to raise. Passing arguments of the wrong type (e.g. passing a "list" when an "int" is expected) should result in a "TypeError", but passing arguments with the wrong value (e.g. a number outside expected boundaries) should result in a "ValueError". exception UnboundLocalError Raised when a reference is made to a local variable in a function or method, but no value has been bound to that variable. This is a subclass of "NameError". exception UnicodeError Raised when a Unicode-related encoding or decoding error occurs. It is a subclass of "ValueError". "UnicodeError" has attributes that describe the encoding or decoding error. For example, "err.object[err.start:err.end]" gives the particular invalid input that the codec failed on. encoding The name of the encoding that raised the error. reason A string describing the specific codec error. object The object the codec was attempting to encode or decode. start The first index of invalid data in "object". end The index after the last invalid data in "object". exception UnicodeEncodeError Raised when a Unicode-related error occurs during encoding. It is a subclass of "UnicodeError". exception UnicodeDecodeError Raised when a Unicode-related error occurs during decoding. It is a subclass of "UnicodeError". exception UnicodeTranslateError Raised when a Unicode-related error occurs during translating. It is a subclass of "UnicodeError". exception ValueError Raised when an operation or function receives an argument that has the right type but an inappropriate value, and the situation is not described by a more precise exception such as "IndexError". exception ZeroDivisionError Raised when the second argument of a division or modulo operation is zero. The associated value is a string indicating the type of the operands and the operation. The following exceptions are kept for compatibility with previous versions; starting from Python 3.3, they are aliases of "OSError". exception EnvironmentError exception IOError exception WindowsError Only available on Windows. OS exceptions ------------- The following exceptions are subclasses of "OSError", they get raised depending on the system error code. exception BlockingIOError Raised when an operation would block on an object (e.g. socket) set for non-blocking operation. Corresponds to "errno" "EAGAIN", "EALREADY", "EWOULDBLOCK" and "EINPROGRESS". In addition to those of "OSError", "BlockingIOError" can have one more attribute: characters_written An integer containing the number of characters written to the stream before it blocked. This attribute is available when using the buffered I/O classes from the "io" module. exception ChildProcessError Raised when an operation on a child process failed. Corresponds to "errno" "ECHILD". exception ConnectionError A base class for connection-related issues. Subclasses are "BrokenPipeError", "ConnectionAbortedError", "ConnectionRefusedError" and "ConnectionResetError". exception BrokenPipeError A subclass of "ConnectionError", raised when trying to write on a pipe while the other end has been closed, or trying to write on a socket which has been shutdown for writing. Corresponds to "errno" "EPIPE" and "ESHUTDOWN". exception ConnectionAbortedError A subclass of "ConnectionError", raised when a connection attempt is aborted by the peer. Corresponds to "errno" "ECONNABORTED". exception ConnectionRefusedError A subclass of "ConnectionError", raised when a connection attempt is refused by the peer. Corresponds to "errno" "ECONNREFUSED". exception ConnectionResetError A subclass of "ConnectionError", raised when a connection is reset by the peer. Corresponds to "errno" "ECONNRESET". exception FileExistsError Raised when trying to create a file or directory which already exists. Corresponds to "errno" "EEXIST". exception FileNotFoundError Raised when a file or directory is requested but doesn't exist. Corresponds to "errno" "ENOENT". exception InterruptedError Raised when a system call is interrupted by an incoming signal. Corresponds to "errno" "EINTR". Changed in version 3.5: Python now retries system calls when a syscall is interrupted by a signal, except if the signal handler raises an exception (see **PEP 475** for the rationale), instead of raising "InterruptedError". exception IsADirectoryError Raised when a file operation (such as "os.remove()") is requested on a directory. Corresponds to "errno" "EISDIR". exception NotADirectoryError Raised when a directory operation (such as "os.listdir()") is requested on something which is not a directory. On most POSIX platforms, it may also be raised if an operation attempts to open or traverse a non-directory file as if it were a directory. Corresponds to "errno" "ENOTDIR". exception PermissionError Raised when trying to run an operation without the adequate access rights - for example filesystem permissions. Corresponds to "errno" "EACCES" and "EPERM". exception ProcessLookupError Raised when a given process doesn't exist. Corresponds to "errno" "ESRCH". exception TimeoutError Raised when a system function timed out at the system level. Corresponds to "errno" "ETIMEDOUT". New in version 3.3: All the above "OSError" subclasses were added. See also: **PEP 3151** - Reworking the OS and IO exception hierarchy Warnings ======== The following exceptions are used as warning categories; see the Warning Categories documentation for more details. exception Warning Base class for warning categories. exception UserWarning Base class for warnings generated by user code. exception DeprecationWarning Base class for warnings about deprecated features when those warnings are intended for other Python developers. Ignored by the default warning filters, except in the "__main__" module (**PEP 565**). Enabling the Python Development Mode shows this warning. The deprecation policy is described in **PEP 387**. exception PendingDeprecationWarning Base class for warnings about features which are obsolete and expected to be deprecated in the future, but are not deprecated at the moment. This class is rarely used as emitting a warning about a possible upcoming deprecation is unusual, and "DeprecationWarning" is preferred for already active deprecations. Ignored by the default warning filters. Enabling the Python Development Mode shows this warning. The deprecation policy is described in **PEP 387**. exception SyntaxWarning Base class for warnings about dubious syntax. exception RuntimeWarning Base class for warnings about dubious runtime behavior. exception FutureWarning Base class for warnings about deprecated features when those warnings are intended for end users of applications that are written in Python. exception ImportWarning Base class for warnings about probable mistakes in module imports. Ignored by the default warning filters. Enabling the Python Development Mode shows this warning. exception UnicodeWarning Base class for warnings related to Unicode. exception EncodingWarning Base class for warnings related to encodings. See Opt-in EncodingWarning for details. New in version 3.10. exception BytesWarning Base class for warnings related to "bytes" and "bytearray". exception ResourceWarning Base class for warnings related to resource usage. Ignored by the default warning filters. Enabling the Python Development Mode shows this warning. New in version 3.2. Exception hierarchy =================== The class hierarchy for built-in exceptions is: BaseException +-- SystemExit +-- KeyboardInterrupt +-- GeneratorExit +-- Exception +-- StopIteration +-- StopAsyncIteration +-- ArithmeticError | +-- FloatingPointError | +-- OverflowError | +-- ZeroDivisionError +-- AssertionError +-- AttributeError +-- BufferError +-- EOFError +-- ImportError | +-- ModuleNotFoundError +-- LookupError | +-- IndexError | +-- KeyError +-- MemoryError +-- NameError | +-- UnboundLocalError +-- OSError | +-- BlockingIOError | +-- ChildProcessError | +-- ConnectionError | | +-- BrokenPipeError | | +-- ConnectionAbortedError | | +-- ConnectionRefusedError | | +-- ConnectionResetError | +-- FileExistsError | +-- FileNotFoundError | +-- InterruptedError | +-- IsADirectoryError | +-- NotADirectoryError | +-- PermissionError | +-- ProcessLookupError | +-- TimeoutError +-- ReferenceError +-- RuntimeError | +-- NotImplementedError | +-- RecursionError +-- SyntaxError | +-- IndentationError | +-- TabError +-- SystemError +-- TypeError +-- ValueError | +-- UnicodeError | +-- UnicodeDecodeError | +-- UnicodeEncodeError | +-- UnicodeTranslateError +-- Warning +-- DeprecationWarning +-- PendingDeprecationWarning +-- RuntimeWarning +-- SyntaxWarning +-- UserWarning +-- FutureWarning +-- ImportWarning +-- UnicodeWarning +-- BytesWarning +-- EncodingWarning +-- ResourceWarning