Message bug?

[Andy Gimblett]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 04:15:38PM +0000, Dale Strickland-Clark wrote:
> Would I be right in thinking that this message quite what the
> developer intended?
> 
> AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'work'
> 
> I have no module called 'module'. 
> 
> Python 2.2 on Win2K.

I don't think you would be right, ie that message is probably
perfectly correct, you're just misinterpreting it.

The error message doesn't imply that you have a module called
'module'.  It implies that you're trying to access the 'work'
attribute of some object which _is a module_, but whose name is not,
alas, reported here.

Here's a demonstration using python2.3.  I import some module, then
try to access a non-existent attribute called "foo", and get the same
error as you.

Python 2.3a0 (#1, Mar 19 2002, 14:46:42) 
[GCC 2.95.4  (Debian prerelease)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import struct
>>> struct.foo
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'foo'

Interestingly, the error message in 2.1 is somewhat more helpful in
that it tells us which module we're trying to acces:

Python 2.1.2 (#1, Mar 14 2002, 10:30:29) 
[GCC 2.95.4  (Debian prerelease)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import struct
>>> struct.foo
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: 'struct' module has no attribute 'foo'

Does anyone know why this changed?  Even so, if you have a traceback
from a running program that'll probably tell you the module name.

By the way, it's almost always a good idea to post actual code (and/or
a full traceback, if talking about exceptions).  That way we might
actually be able to tell you _exactly_ what's wrong.  :-)

Hope this helps,

Andy

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Andy Gimblett - Programmer - Frontier Internet Services Limited
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