> Knowing that pdb stops just before the interpreter executes the line after pdb.set_trace(), what prevents you from writing the pdb.set_trace() statement before the last line of the except clause ?

Of course, that can be done. The issue here is to get the correct and expected behavior from pdb/ipdb.

On a similar note, users might want to put just the set_trace() call and no other code in the block while writing the code or during debugging the exception caught.