[Python-Dev] Request for review

[Tim Peters]

[Georg Brandl]
> Hm. This broke a few doctests. I can fix them, but I wonder if
> doctest should accept a bare exception name if the exception
> is defined in the current module.

No.

> Or should it ignore the module name altogether?

No.  doctest strives to be magic-free WYSIWYG.  If someone _intends_
the module name to be optional in a doctest, they should explicitly
use doctest's ELLIPSIS option.

> (Background:
>
> In normal exception tracebacks, non-builtin exceptions are printed with
> their module name prepended:
>
> Traceback:
> [...]
> decimal.InvalidOperation: ...
>
> When formatted by traceback.format_exception_only, the module name was
> omitted, which the patch mentioned above corrected. Since doctest relies
> on that behavior, three stdlib doctests broke.)

Changes to visible behavior should not be introduced in bugfix
releases, unless that happens as an unavoidable consequence of
repairing a critical bug, so this should be yanked from 2.4.  I agree
the traceback formatting inconsistency was a bug, but it was hardly
critical (for example, nobody noticed it for 15 years <0.5 wink>).