How do I raise the same Exception with a custom message in Python?

Question

I have this try block in my code:

try:
    do_something_that_might_raise_an_exception()
except ValueError as err:
    errmsg = \'My custom error         


        

Answer 1

This only works with Python 3. You can modify the exception's original arguments and add your own arguments.

An exception remembers the args it was created with. I presume this is so that you can modify the exception.

In the function reraise we prepend the exception's original arguments with any new arguments that we want (like a message). Finally we re-raise the exception while preserving the trace-back history.

def reraise(e, *args):
  '''re-raise an exception with extra arguments
  :param e: The exception to reraise
  :param args: Extra args to add to the exception
  '''

  # e.args is a tuple of arguments that the exception with instantiated with.
  #
  e.args = args + e.args

  # Recreate the expection and preserve the traceback info so thta we can see 
  # where this exception originated.
  #
  raise e.with_traceback(e.__traceback__)   


def bad():
  raise ValueError('bad')

def very():
  try:
    bad()
  except Exception as e:
    reraise(e, 'very')

def very_very():
  try:
    very()
  except Exception as e:
    reraise(e, 'very')

very_very()

output

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "main.py", line 35, in 
    very_very()
  File "main.py", line 30, in very_very
    reraise(e, 'very')
  File "main.py", line 15, in reraise
    raise e.with_traceback(e.__traceback__)
  File "main.py", line 28, in very_very
    very()
  File "main.py", line 24, in very
    reraise(e, 'very')
  File "main.py", line 15, in reraise
    raise e.with_traceback(e.__traceback__)
  File "main.py", line 22, in very
    bad()
  File "main.py", line 18, in bad
    raise ValueError('bad')
ValueError: ('very', 'very', 'bad')