[Edu-sig] Python error messages

[Mikael Johansson]

Hello all!

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> > Simply rewriting the error messages would be an incomplete solution.
> > The programming environment should really help the programmer pinpoint
> > the error's location and its context. In other words, I think a a good GUI 
> > debugger would be useful.
> 
> Agreed.  For example, the latest version of IDLE (to be announced)
> reports syntax errors by highlighting the offending token in the
> source code.  Of course, we could go further, e.g. by doing the same
> for runtime errors.  It also has a GUI debugger (which needs to be
> greatly improved before it can be called "good" :-).

Very good points came up, and also some good=bad error messages that I
failed to come up with yesterday.

Error highlighting is very useful. I'm also glad to see that IDLE under
windows now can emulate stdin, so that raw_input():s can be used directly
from within IDLE so the students don't have to open a DOS-box and try to
navigate in it to find their .py:s.

But to stick to the "error messages" topic, is there anywhere any nice
compilation of python error messages with a bit longer description of the
error and possible causes? I think it would ease the decryption of the
error messages.

Have a nice day,
    Mikael J.