Hi, When I need to make sense of a python exception, I often need to parse the string exception in order to retrieve the data. Example: try: print foo except NameError, e: print e.args symbol = e.args[0][17:-16] ==> ("NameError: name 'foo' is not defined", ) or try: (4).foo except NameError, e: print e.args ==> ("'int' object has no attribute 'foo'",) Moreover, in the documentation about Exception, I read """Warning: Messages to exceptions are not part of the Python API. Their contents may change from one version of Python to the next without warning and should not be relied on by code which will run under multiple versions of the interpreter. """ So even args could not be relied upon ! Two questions: 1) did I miss something in dealing with exceptions ? 2) Could this be changed to .args more in line with: a) first example: e.args = ('foo', "NameError: name 'foo' is not defined") b) second example: e.args = (4, 'foo', "'int' object has no attribute 'foo'",) the message of the string can even be retrieved with str(e) so it is also redundant. BTW, the Warning in the doc enables to change this :-) To be backward compatible, the error message could also be the first element of the tuple. Seb ps: There may be problems (that I am not aware) with an exception keeping references to other objects