Adding information to an exception?

Question

I want to achieve something like this:

def foo():
   try:
       raise IOError(\'Stuff \')
   except:
       raise

def bar(arg1):
    try:
       foo()
             


        

Answer 1

I'd do it like this so changing its type in foo() won't require also changing it in bar().

def foo():
    try:
        raise IOError('Stuff')
    except:
        raise

def bar(arg1):
    try:
        foo()
    except Exception as e:
        raise type(e)(e.message + ' happens at %s' % arg1)

bar('arg1')

---

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 13, in 
    bar('arg1')
  File "test.py", line 11, in bar
    raise type(e)(e.message + ' happens at %s' % arg1)
IOError: Stuff happens at arg1

Update 1

Here's a slight modification that preserves the original traceback:

...
def bar(arg1):
    try:
        foo()
    except Exception as e:
        import sys
        raise type(e), type(e)(e.message +
                               ' happens at %s' % arg1), sys.exc_info()[2]

bar('arg1')

---

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 16, in 
    bar('arg1')
  File "test.py", line 11, in bar
    foo()
  File "test.py", line 5, in foo
    raise IOError('Stuff')
IOError: Stuff happens at arg1

Update 2

For Python 3.x, the code in my first update is syntactically incorrect plus the idea of having a message attribute on BaseException was retracted in a change to PEP 352 on 2012-05-16 (my first update was posted on 2012-03-12). So currently, in Python 3.5.2 anyway, you'd need to do something along these lines to preserve the traceback and not hardcode the type of exception in function bar(). Also note that there will be the line:

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

in the traceback messages displayed.

# for Python 3.x
...
def bar(arg1):
    try:
        foo()
    except Exception as e:
        import sys
        raise type(e)(str(e) +
                      ' happens at %s' % arg1).with_traceback(sys.exc_info()[2])

bar('arg1')

Update 3

A commenter asked if there was a way that would work in both Python 2 and 3. Although the answer might seem to be "No" due to the syntax differences, there is a way around that by using a helper function like reraise() in the six add-on module. So, if you'd rather not use the library for some reason, below is a simplified standalone version.

Note too, that since the exception is reraised within the reraise() function, that will appear in whatever traceback is raised, but the final result is what you want.

import sys

if sys.version_info.major < 3:  # Python 2?
    # Using exec avoids a SyntaxError in Python 3.
    exec("""def reraise(exc_type, exc_value, exc_traceback=None):
                raise exc_type, exc_value, exc_traceback""")
else:
    def reraise(exc_type, exc_value, exc_traceback=None):
        if exc_value is None:
            exc_value = exc_type()
        if exc_value.__traceback__ is not exc_traceback:
            raise exc_value.with_traceback(exc_traceback)
        raise exc_value

def foo():
    try:
        raise IOError('Stuff')
    except:
        raise

def bar(arg1):
    try:
       foo()
    except Exception as e:
        reraise(type(e), type(e)(str(e) +
                                 ' happens at %s' % arg1), sys.exc_info()[2])

bar('arg1')