[New-bugs-announce] [issue15639] csv.Error description is incorrectly broad

[Xavier Morel]

New submission from Xavier Morel:

In both Python 2.7 and Python 3.x, csv.Error is documented as:

    Raised by any of the functions when an error is detected.

As far as I can tell from using the module and looking at the code, this is completely incorrect. There is actually a single instance of csv.Error being used: the instantiation of csv.Dialect (which converts TypeError raised from _csv._Dialect() into csv.Error, a comment notes that this is "for compatibility with py 2.3").

And the only way to hit that code paths seems to be subclassing `Dialect` and putting incorrect values in the various attributes (providing them to `csv.reader` raises a TypeError).

I believe the documentation to csv.Error should be changed to:

1. Mark it as effectively deprecated
2. Indicate that the only situation in which it it may be raised is when initializing a subclass of csv.Dialect

----------
assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation
messages: 168096
nosy: docs at python, xmorel
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: csv.Error description is incorrectly broad
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.3

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue15639>
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