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[Python-Dev] Revert #12085 fix for __del__ attribute error message

Ethan Furman ethan at stoneleaf.us
Mon Sep 23 23:38:48 CEST 2013 
On 09/23/2013 02:35 PM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Sep 2013 07:19:14 +1000
> Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 24 Sep 2013 01:24, "Antoine Pitrou" <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 18:51:04 +1000
>>> Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 23 September 2013 18:45, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>>>>> Le Mon, 23 Sep 2013 18:17:51 +1000,
>>>>> Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> a écrit :
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here's what I suggest changing that error to:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> del x
>>>>>> Unraisable exception suppressed when calling <bound method C.__del__
>>>>>> of <__main__.C object at 0x7f98b8b61538>>
>>>>>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>>>>>    File "<stdin>", line 3, in __del__
>>>>>> RuntimeError: Going away now
>>>>>
>>>>> Why not simply "Exception automatically caught in <bound method
>>>>> C.__del__> [...]" ?
>>>>
>>>> It only answers the "what" (i.e. the exception was automatically
>>>> caught), without addressing the "why" (i.e. because there wasn't
>>>> anything else useful the interpreter could do with it)
>>>
>>> Yes, but I agree with Greg that "unraisable" is wrong. After all, it
>>> was raised, and it can even be caught by the programmer (inside
>>> __del__).
>>
>> The word doesn't literally mean the exception itself was unraisable. It
>> means it was raised, we caught it and we're writing it to stderr because we
>> *can't raise it again*.
>
> But that's because you already know what it's supposed to convey. The
> average user doesn't, and only sees "unraisable".

All the more reason to have text in the error message that is easily searchable.

--
~Ethan~
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