Asyncio.gather vs asyncio.wait

Question

asyncio.gather and asyncio.wait seem to have similar uses: I have a bunch of async things that I want to execute/wait for (not necessarily waiting for one to finish before t

Answer 1

A very important distinction, which is easy to miss, is the default bheavior of these two functions, when it comes to exceptions.

---

I'll use this example to simulate a coroutine that will raise exceptions, sometimes -

import asyncio
import random


async def a_flaky_tsk(i):
    await asyncio.sleep(i)  # bit of fuzz to simulate a real-world example

    if i % 2 == 0:
        print(i, "ok")
    else:
        print(i, "crashed!")
        raise ValueError

coros = [a_flaky_tsk(i) for i in range(10)]

---

await asyncio.gather(*coros) outputs -

0 ok
1 crashed!
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/dev/PycharmProjects/trading/xxx.py", line 20, in 
    asyncio.run(main())
  File "/Users/dev/.pyenv/versions/3.8.2/lib/python3.8/asyncio/runners.py", line 43, in run
    return loop.run_until_complete(main)
  File "/Users/dev/.pyenv/versions/3.8.2/lib/python3.8/asyncio/base_events.py", line 616, in run_until_complete
    return future.result()
  File "/Users/dev/PycharmProjects/trading/xxx.py", line 17, in main
    await asyncio.gather(*coros)
  File "/Users/dev/PycharmProjects/trading/xxx.py", line 12, in a_flaky_tsk
    raise ValueError
ValueError

As you can see, the coros after index 1 never got to execute.

---

But await asyncio.wait(coros) continues to execute tasks, even if some of them fail -

0 ok
1 crashed!
2 ok
3 crashed!
4 ok
5 crashed!
6 ok
7 crashed!
8 ok
9 crashed!
Task exception was never retrieved
future:  exception=ValueError()>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/dev/PycharmProjects/trading/xxx.py", line 12, in a_flaky_tsk
    raise ValueError
ValueError
Task exception was never retrieved
future:  exception=ValueError()>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/dev/PycharmProjects/trading/xxx.py", line 12, in a_flaky_tsk
    raise ValueError
ValueError
Task exception was never retrieved
future:  exception=ValueError()>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/dev/PycharmProjects/trading/xxx.py", line 12, in a_flaky_tsk
    raise ValueError
ValueError
Task exception was never retrieved
future:  exception=ValueError()>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/dev/PycharmProjects/trading/xxx.py", line 12, in a_flaky_tsk
    raise ValueError
ValueError
Task exception was never retrieved
future:  exception=ValueError()>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/dev/PycharmProjects/trading/xxx.py", line 12, in a_flaky_tsk
    raise ValueError
ValueError

---

Ofcourse, this behavior can be changed for both by using -

asyncio.gather(..., return_exceptions=True)

or,

asyncio.wait([...], return_when=asyncio.FIRST_EXCEPTION)

---

But it doesn't end here!

Notice: Task exception was never retrieved in the logs above.

asyncio.wait() won't re-raise exceptions from the child tasks until you await them individually. (The stacktrace in the logs are just messages, they cannot be caught!)

done, pending = await asyncio.wait(coros)
for tsk in done:
    try:
        await tsk
    except Exception as e:
        print("I caught:", repr(e))

Output -

0 ok
1 crashed!
2 ok
3 crashed!
4 ok
5 crashed!
6 ok
7 crashed!
8 ok
9 crashed!
I caught: ValueError()
I caught: ValueError()
I caught: ValueError()
I caught: ValueError()
I caught: ValueError()

---

On the other hand, to catch exceptions with asyncio.gather(), you must -

results = await asyncio.gather(*coros, return_exceptions=True)
for result_or_exc in results:
    if isinstance(result_or_exc, Exception):
        print("I caught:", repr(result_or_exc))

(Same output as before)