Extract traceback info from an exception object

Question

Given an Exception object (of unknown origin) is there way to obtain its traceback? I have code like this:

def stuff():
   try:
       .....
       return us         


        

Answer 1

There's a very good reason the traceback is not stored in the exception; because the traceback holds references to its stack's locals, this would result in a circular reference and (temporary) memory leak until the circular GC kicks in. (This is why you should never store the traceback in a local variable.)

About the only thing I can think of would be for you to monkeypatch stuff's globals so that when it thinks it's catching Exception it's actually catching a specialised type and the exception propagates to you as the caller:

module_containing_stuff.Exception = type("BogusException", (Exception,), {})
try:
    stuff()
except Exception:
    import sys
    print sys.exc_info()