[Python-Dev] Deprecating string exceptions

[Guido van Rossum]

>     GvR> There was some discussion that concluded that it was a useful
>     GvR> feature (e.g. because the Exception class defines a standard
>     GvR> signature and some standard attributes)
> 
> But most of the (early) built-in exception interfaces were chosen for
> backwards compatibility with the old string-based standard exceptions,
> so I'm not sure how useful they are as a specification.
> E.g. Exception.__init__() essentially takes a *args and assigns the
> tuple to exc.args, and that's about it.  Maybe in a perfect world
> that's still a useful signature, I don't know.

Well, it could certainly grow more standard stuff (like a traceback
pointer) and that would be more useful if there was a common base
class to inherit it from.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)