Guido> You're looking at this all wrong. In the past, we've focused on Guido> saying "unqualified except is wrong". But IMO "except Exception" Guido> or "except StandardError" is just as wrong! You're still Guido> catching way more exceptions than is good for you. Point taken. >> * I'm not saying you can't use "except:". I'm not advocating a >> semantic change to the meaning of "except:". (I am suggesting that >> KeyboardInterrupt should not inherit from StandardError.) I'm >> saying that the recommended usage for application programmers >> should be to avoid it. Guido> Sorry. I told you I hadn't read the thread the first time around. So, do we agree on this point? Guido> We should fix the "except:" examples by catching a very specific Guido> error, like AttributeError, TypeError or KeyError. *Not* by Guido> catching Exception or StandardError. Correct. That's what the long-standing bug #411881 is about. It just deals with the standard library however, and doesn't delve into the stuff in Tools, Demos, etc. Skip