Python exceptions: is there a way to find the exception attributes?

[Erik Max Francis]

Pierre Rouleau wrote:

> Is there a way to find out about the existence of these attributes
> without having to read the documentation, using the dir() function or
> something else?
> 
> It would be nice to be able to do that from the interpreter.  The only
> thing i have found using dir() is shown below and it does not give me
> the attributes.
	...
> Of course, I could force an exception and print it like:
	...
> Is this the only way ?

Without inspecting the code, probably.  The details about the exception
are instance attributes, not class attributes, so you won't find them by
simple inspection of the class type; you'd have to look at the actual
code of the exception's __init__ method.

Especially in the face of user-defined exceptions, the best way to
proceed is by inspecting the instance attributes of an actual exception
object after the fact.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, USA / 37 20 N 121 53 W / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ You are the lovers rock / The rock that I cling to
\__/ Sade
    Church / http://www.alcyone.com/pyos/church/
 A lambda calculus explorer in Python.