RuntimeError?
Mark Hammond
MHammond at skippinet.com.au
Mon Jun 28 21:16:29 EDT 1999
Gerrit Holl wrote in message <19990628105921.A26266 at optiplex.palga.uucp>...
>> can be <wink>. It generally seems to mean something bad and unexpected
>> happened, but not bad enough to shut down the interpreter (things *that*
bad
>> raise SystemError).
Actually, I dare to correct Tim on this point. SystemErrors typically will
_not_ shutdown the interpreter (they used to, but not any more!)
>Ah, I understand. But what kind of things are bad enough to raise
SystemError?
>core dump?
My take is this: RuntimeError is raised in a situation that could not
reasonably have been predicted by the programmer (eg, someone deleting
sys.stdout). A SystemError OTOH usually means an internal Python error
(Python or an extension). The most common example of a SystemError that I
see is when an extension module returns NULL but doesnt set a Python
exception - ie, a bug that needs to be fixed by the original programmer, and
nothing the end user could do would prevent this. (roughly speaking, of
course :-)
A core dump is unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your POV) not
mapped to a Python exception.
Mark.
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