[AstroPy] Capturing pyfits warnings

[Anne Archibald]

On 15 September 2010 10:26, Bridgman, William T.
<william.t.bridgman at nasa.gov> wrote:
> try:
>        fimg=pyfits.open(dfile)
> except:
>        whatever...
>
> header=fimg[0].header
>
> If warnings are warnings, this runs fine.
>
> If warnings are elevated to exceptions, the pyfits.open throws the
> exception before loading fimg.  The fimg[0].header access fails.
> Putting fimg[0].header access inside the try: block doesn't help
> either (of course).
>
> Perhaps inside the except: block I could set warnings back from
> exceptions to warnings and do pyfits.open again.  I don't know that
> much about python innards, but this sounds like something that would
> cause other weird (stack?) problems as I examine the 22,000+ FITS
> files in our data area.

This is probably the best way to handle it. That is, turn warnings
into exceptions and open the file. If an exception gets raised, note
the details, then turn warnings back into warnings (which you have to
do anyway) and reopen the file.

I don't think you have to worry about having many exceptions mess up
your stack; they are a fundamental part of python, not a an
afterthought (e.g. setjmp()) and proper cleanup after exceptions is a
basic requirement for extensions. There's plenty of code that uses an
exception as the signal to terminate a loop, for example.

In this particular context, it should be fairly efficient, since (I
think) the open detects the problem while reading the header rather
than while reading the (potentially very large) body of the FITS file.
The main problem with this re-opening idea is that you only get
information about the *first* warning emitted. If there are
potentially more than one for a given file, you're going to have to do
some grotesque monkeypatching.

Anne

> Tom
>
>
> On Sep 15, 2010, at 10:06 AM, jtaylor2 at stsci.edu wrote:
>
>> Tom,
>>
>>   I am not sure I understand exactly what is going on here, but if
>> having the warnings module issue exceptions instead of warnings is
>> causing another warning to be raised as an exception that you would
>> like to remain as a warning, you can fix this by using
>> filterwarnings and supplying a regular expression that matches just
>> the warning that you want raised as an exception.  In your case
>> something like:
>>
>> warnings.filterwarnings('error',message='.*Warning:  File may have
>> been.*"')
>>
>>   If you contact me directly at jtaylor2 at stsci.edu with more
>> details, especially if you can point me to a fits file that is
>> causing the problem, I may be able to be of more help.
>>
>>     Jim T.
>
> --
> Dr. William T."Tom" Bridgman               Scientific Visualization
> Studio
> Global Science & Technology, Inc.          NASA/Goddard Space Flight
> Center
> Email: William.T.Bridgman at nasa.gov         Code 610.3
> Phone: 301-286-1346                        Greenbelt, MD 20771
> FAX:   301-286-1634                        http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/
>
>
>
>
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