unittest: assertRaises() with an instance instead of a type

[Ulrich Eckhardt]

Am 28.03.2012 20:26, schrieb Terry Reedy:
> On 3/28/2012 8:28 AM, Ulrich Eckhardt wrote:
>> with self.assertRaises(MyException(SOME_FOO_ERROR)):
>>     foo()
>
> I presume that if this worked the way you want, all attributes would
> have to match. The message part of builtin exceptions is allowed to
> change, so hard-coding an exact expected message makes tests fragile.
> This is a problem with doctest.

I would have assumed that comparing two exceptions leaves out messages 
that are intended for the user, not as part of the API. However, my 
expectations aren't met anyway, because ...

>> This of course requires the exception to be equality-comparable.
>
> Equality comparison is by id. So this code will not do what you want.

  >>> Exception('foo') == Exception('foo')
  False

Yikes! That was unexpected and completely changes my idea. Any clue 
whether this is intentional? Is identity the fallback when no equality 
is defined for two objects?

Thanks for your feedback!

Uli