Overriding traceback print_exc()?

[Fredrik Lundh]

Bob Greschke wrote:

> I want to cause any traceback output from my applications to show up in one 
> of my dialog boxes, instead of in the command or terminal window (between 
> running on Solaris, Linux, OSX and Windows systems there might not be any 
> command window or terminal window to show the traceback messages in).  Do I 
> want to do something like override the print_exc (or format_exc?) method of 
> traceback to get the text of the message and call my dialog box routine?

one way to do that is to put a big try/except around your main program, 
and display the dialogue box in the except clause:

     import traceback

     def main():
	raise RuntimeError("oops!")

     try:
	main()
     except (KeyboardInterrupt, SystemExit):
	raise
     except:
	print "ERROR", repr(traceback.format_exc())

another approach is to install an exit-handler that uses last_traceback 
and friends to generate a traceback:

     import atexit, traceback, sys

     def postmortem():
	if hasattr(sys, "last_traceback"):
	    print "ERROR", repr(traceback.format_exception(
		sys.last_type, sys.last_value, sys.last_traceback
		))

     atexit.register(postmortem)

     def main():
	raise RuntimeError("oops!")

     main()

the latter is less intrusive, and can be squirreled away in a support 
module.  also, the original exception is still reported to the console, 
as usual.

</F>