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How to get the stack trace of a nested exeption in python?

If an exception is raised I'd like to analyse the stack trace in python that tells about where exactly the problem is in the source code file.
Of course for that purpose the module traceback exists. And that works fine for regular exceptions. But how do you deal with this situation if nested exceptions occur?
Consider this example:
def test():
try:
a = 0
b = 5 / a
except Exception as ee1:
assert False
test()
This example prints two exceptions:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./test4d.py", line 12, in test
b = 5 / a
ZeroDivisionError: division by zero
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./test4d.py", line 18, in <module>
test()
File "./test4d.py", line 14, in test
assert False
AssertionError
So information about both exceptions is known to the interpreter. I therefore like to retrieve these two pieces of information from Python: The stack trace of the assert statement (used as an example here to cause an exception) and the stack trace of the division by zero exception (used as an example here to cause an exception). How can I do that?
And the second part of the question: How can I do that in a structured way? The module traceback can be used to get more information about an existing exception. But I do not want to print the exception, I want to store it. Therefore I'd like to get the stack trace as a tuple of instances of some class where each instance represents the data within each stack frame. How can I do that?

There is a variable named __context__ associated with an exception. This variable can be used to access nested exceptions. See this example:
import traceback
def test():
try:
a = 0
b = 5 / a
except Exception as ee1:
assert False
try:
test()
except Exception as ee:
print(repr(ee))
stackTraceList = traceback.extract_stack(ee.__traceback__.tb_frame)
del stackTraceList[0]
for frame in stackTraceList:
print("\t", frame)
if ee.__context__:
print(repr(ee.__context__))
stackTraceList = traceback.extract_stack(ee.__context__.__traceback__.tb_frame)
del stackTraceList[0]
for frame in stackTraceList:
print("\t", frame)
This will output the following text:
AssertionError()
ZeroDivisionError('division by zero',)
<FrameSummary file ./example.py, line 8 in test>
That indicates that both exceptions can be identified and their stack traces can be iterated through.
For convenience I implemented a simple helper module to process exceptions and stack traces named jk_exceptionhelper. You can install this module using pip. For details have a look at the GIT repository: https://github.com/jkpubsrc/python-module-jk-exceptionhelper

How can I create an Exception in Python minus the last stack frame?

Not sure how possible this is, but here goes:
I'm trying to write an object with some slightly more subtle behavior - which may or may not be a good idea, I haven't determined that yet.
I have this method:
def __getattr__(self, attr):
try:
return self.props[attr].value
except KeyError:
pass #to hide the keyerror exception
msg = "'{}' object has no attribute '{}'"
raise AttributeError(msg.format(self.__dict__['type'], attr))
Now, when I create an instance of this like so:
t = Thing()
t.foo
I get a stacktrace containing my function:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "attrfun.py", line 23, in <module>
t.foo
File "attrfun.py", line 15, in __getattr__
raise AttributeError(msg.format(self._type, attr))
AttributeError: 'Thing' object has no attribute 'foo'
I don't want that - I want the stack trace to read:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "attrfun.py", line 23, in <module>
t.foo
AttributeError: 'Thing' object has no attribute 'foo'
Is this possible with a minimal amount of effort, or is there kind of a lot required? I found this answer which indicates that something looks to be possible, though perhaps involved. If there's an easier way, I'd love to hear it! Otherwise I'll just put that idea on the shelf for now.

You cannot tamper with traceback objects (and that's a good thing). You can only control how you process one that you've already got.
The only exceptions are: you can
substitute an exception with another or re-raise it with raise e (i.e make the traceback point to the re-raise statement's location)
raise an exception with an explicit traceback object
remove outer frame(s) from a traceback object by accessing its tb_next property (this reflects a traceback object's onion-like structure)
For your purpose, the way to go appears to be the 1st option: re-raise an exception from a handler one level above your function.
And, I'll say this again, this is harmful for yourself or whoever will be using your module as it deletes valuable diagnostic information. If you're dead set on making your module proprietary with whatever rationale, it's more productive for that goal to make it a C extension.

The traceback object is created during stack unwinding, not directly when you raise the exception, so you can not alter it right in your function. What you could do instead (though it's probably a bad idea) is to alter the top level exception hook so that it hides your function from the traceback.
Suppose you have this code:
class MagicGetattr:
def __getattr__(self, item):
raise AttributeError(f"{item} not found")
orig_excepthook = sys.excepthook
def excepthook(type, value, traceback):
iter_tb = traceback
while iter_tb.tb_next is not None:
if iter_tb.tb_next.tb_frame.f_code is MagicGetattr.__getattr__.__code__:
iter_tb.tb_next = None
break
iter_tb = iter_tb.tb_next
orig_excepthook(type, value, traceback)
sys.excepthook = excepthook
# The next line will raise an error
MagicGetattr().foobar
You will get the following output:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "test.py", line 49, in <module>
MagicGetattr().foobar
AttributeError: foobar not found
Note that this ignores the __cause__ and __context__ members of the exception, which you would probably want to visit too if you were to implement this in real life.

You can get the current frame and any other level using the inspect module. For instance, here is what I use when I'd like to know where I'm in my code :
from inspect import currentframe
def get_c_frame(level = 0) :
"""
Return caller's frame
"""
return currentframe(level)
...
def locate_error(level = 0) :
"""
Return a string containing the filename, function name and line
number where this function was called.
Output is : ('file name' - 'function name' - 'line number')
"""
fi = get_c_frame(level = level + 2)
return '({} - {} - {})'.format(__file__,
fi.f_code,
fi.f_lineno)

Print an error message without printing a traceback and close the program when a condition is not met

I've seen similar questions to this one but none of them really address the trackback.
If I have a class like so
class Stop_if_no_then():
def __init__(self, value one, operator, value_two, then, line_or_label, line_number):
self._firstvalue = value_one
self._secondvalue = value_two
self._operator = operator
self._gohere = line_or_label
self._then = then
self._line_number = line_number
def execute(self, OtherClass):
"code comparing the first two values and making changes etc"
What I want my execute method to be able to do is if self._then is not equal to the string "THEN" (in allcaps) then I want it to raise a custom error message and terminate the whole program while also not showing a traceback.
If the error is encountered the only thing that should print out would look something like (I'm using 3 as an example, formatting is not a problem) this.
`Syntax Error (Line 3): No -THEN- present in the statement.`
I'm not very picky about it actually being an exception class object, so there's no issue in that aspect. Since I will be using this in a while loop, simple if, elif just repeats the message over and over (because obviously I am not closing the loop). I have seen sys.exit() but that also prints out a giant block of red text, unless I am not using it correctly. I don't want to catch the exception in my loop because there are other classes in the same module in which I need to implement something like this.

You can turn off the traceback by limiting its depth.
Python 2.x
import sys
sys.tracebacklimit = 0
Python 3.x
In Python 3.5.2 and 3.6.1, setting tracebacklimit to 0 does not seem to have the intended effect. This is a known bug. Note that -1 doesn't work either. Setting it to None does however seem to work, at least for now.
In Python 3.6.2 and above you should set tracebacklimit to 0 or -1, as setting it to None does not disable the traceback output.
Python 3.6.1 and bellow results:
>>> import sys
>>> sys.tracebacklimit = 0
>>> raise Exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
Exception
>>> sys.tracebacklimit = -1
>>> raise Exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
Exception
>>> sys.tracebacklimit = None
>>> raise Exception
Exception
Python 3.6.2 and above results:
>>> import sys
>>> sys.tracebacklimit = 0
>>> raise Exception
Exception
>>> sys.tracebacklimit = -1
>>> raise Exception
Exception
>>> sys.tracebacklimit = None
>>> raise Exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
Exception
Nevertheless, for better or worse, if multiple exceptions are raised, they can all still be printed. For example:
socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
urllib.error.URLError: <urlopen error [Errno -2] Name or service not known>

You can use SystemExit exception:
except Exception as err:
raise SystemExit(err)
https://docs.python.org/3/library/exceptions.html

You can use a try: and then except Exception as inst:
What that will do is give you your error message in a variable named inst and you can print out the arguments on the error with inst.args. Try printing it out and seeing what happens, and is any item in inst.args is the one you are looking for.
EDIT Here is an example I tried with pythons IDLE:
>>> try:
open("epik.sjj")
except Exception as inst:
d = inst
>>> d
FileNotFoundError(2, 'No such file or directory')
>>> d.args
(2, 'No such file or directory')
>>> d.args[1]
'No such file or directory'
>>>
EDIT 2: as for closing the program you can always raise and error or you can use sys.exit()

The cleanest way that I know is to use sys.excepthook.
You implement a three argument function that accepts type, value, and traceback and does whatever you like (say, only prints the value) and assign that function to sys.excepthook.
Here is an example:
import sys
def excepthook(type, value, traceback):
print(value)
sys.excepthook = excepthook
raise ValueError('hello')
This is available in both python 2 and python 3.

If you want to get rid of any traceback for customs exceptions and have line number,
you can do this trick
Python 3
import sys
import inspect
class NoTraceBackWithLineNumber(Exception):
def __init__(self, msg):
try:
ln = sys.exc_info()[-1].tb_lineno
except AttributeError:
ln = inspect.currentframe().f_back.f_lineno
self.args = "{0.__name__} (line {1}): {2}".format(type(self), ln, msg),
sys.exit(self)
class MyNewError(NoTraceBackWithLineNumber):
pass
raise MyNewError("Now TraceBack Is Gone")
Will give this output, and make the raise keyword useless
MyNewError (line 16): Now TraceBack Is Gone

"Exception chaining can be disabled by using from None " - Python docs
>>> try:
... open('database.sqlite')
... except IOError:
... raise RuntimeError from None
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 4, in <module>

In general, if you want to catch any exception except SystemExit, and exit with the exception's message without the traceback, define your main function as below:
>>> import sys
>>> def main():
... try:
... # Run your program from here.
... raise RandomException # For testing
... except (Exception, KeyboardInterrupt) as exc:
... sys.exit(exc)
...
>>> main()
name 'RandomException' is not defined
$ echo $?
1
Note that in the case of multiple exceptions being raised, only one message is printed.
This answer is meant to improve upon the one by The-IT.

Catching unpickleable exceptions and re-raising

This is a followup to my question Hang in Python script using SQLAlchemy and multiprocessing. As discussed in that question, pickling exceptions is problematic in Python. This is usually not a issue, but one case when it is, is when errors occur in the python multiprocessing module. Since multiprocessing moves objects around by pickling, if an error occurs inside a multiprocessing process, the entire process may hang, as demonstrated in that question.
One possible approach is to fix all the problematic exceptions, as discussed in that question. This is not easy, since one cannot easily know in advance which exceptions may be called. An alternative approach, which was suggested by lbolla in an answer to the question, is to catch the exception, construct an equivalent harmless exception, and then rethrow.
However, I'm not sure of exactly how to do this. Consider the following code.
class BadExc(Exception):
def __init__(self, message, a):
'''Non-optional param in the constructor.'''
Exception.__init__(self, message)
self.a = a
import sys
try:
try:
#print foo
raise BadExc("bad exception error message", "a")
except Exception, e:
raise Exception(e.__class__.__name__ + ": " +str(e)), None, sys.exc_info()[2]
except Exception, f:
pass
import cPickle
a = cPickle.dumps(f)
l = cPickle.loads(a)
print "raising error"
raise sys.exc_info()[0], sys.exc_info()[1], sys.exc_info()[2]
This code pickles and unpickles the exception, and then throws it, giving the error
raising error
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 11, in <module>
Exception: BadExc: bad exception error message
Credits to Glenn Maynard's answer to "“Inner exception” (with traceback) in Python?".
This has the important stuff, namely the traceback, the error message, and the exception type, so this might be the best one can do. But ideally I'd like something that looks exactly like the original exception, namely
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 11, in <module>
__main__.BadExc: bad exception error message
or more generally, with the name of the exception in the front, rather than Exception. Is this possible?
Alternatively, instead of the BadExc class, one can use the print foo statement instead, which gives a NameError. However, this exception does not require special handling.

You can override sys.excepthook to achieve what you want. It at least works for this example, but it's pretty hacky so please test and no promises :-)
import sys
def excepthook_wrapper(type, value, traceback):
if len(value.args) == 2:
name, msg = value.args
value.args = (msg,)
sys.__excepthook__(name, value, traceback)
else:
sys.__excepthook__(type, value, traceback)
sys.excepthook = excepthook_wrapper
(Edit: I'm not really happy with this because now 'normal' Exceptions with two arguments will get handled differently too. Possible solution, 'tag' your special Exceptions by passing "PICKLED" as a first argument and then check for that, instead of checking for the length of the args.)
And then create the Exception with two arguments, the name (__module__.__class__) and the Exception message (str(e)):
try:
try:
#print foo
raise BadExc("bad exception error message", "a")
except Exception, e:
cls = e.__class__
if hasattr(cls, '__module__'):
name = '{0}.{1}'.format(cls.__module__, cls.__name__)
else:
name = cls.__name__
raise Exception(name, str(e)), None, sys.exc_info()[2]
except Exception, f:
pass
Then this:
import cPickle
a = cPickle.dumps(f)
l = cPickle.loads(a)
print "raising error"
raise sys.exc_info()[0], sys.exc_info()[1], sys.exc_info()[2]
Prints:
raising error
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "test.py", line 18, in <module>
raise BadExc("bad exception error message", "a")
__main__.BadExc: bad exception error message

"Inner exception" (with traceback) in Python?

My background is in C# and I've just recently started programming in Python. When an exception is thrown I typically want to wrap it in another exception that adds more information, while still showing the full stack trace. It's quite easy in C#, but how do I do it in Python?
Eg. in C# I would do something like this:
try
{
ProcessFile(filePath);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
throw new ApplicationException("Failed to process file " + filePath, ex);
}
In Python I can do something similar:
try:
ProcessFile(filePath)
except Exception as e:
raise Exception('Failed to process file ' + filePath, e)
...but this loses the traceback of the inner exception!
Edit: I'd like to see both exception messages and both stack traces and correlate the two. That is, I want to see in the output that exception X occurred here and then exception Y there - same as I would in C#. Is this possible in Python 2.6? Looks like the best I can do so far (based on Glenn Maynard's answer) is:
try:
ProcessFile(filePath)
except Exception as e:
raise Exception('Failed to process file' + filePath, e), None, sys.exc_info()[2]
This includes both the messages and both the tracebacks, but it doesn't show which exception occurred where in the traceback.

Python 3
In python 3 you can do the following:
try:
raise MyExceptionToBeWrapped("I have twisted my ankle")
except MyExceptionToBeWrapped as e:
raise MyWrapperException("I'm not in a good shape") from e
This will produce something like this:
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
MyExceptionToBeWrapped: ("I have twisted my ankle")
The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
MyWrapperException: ("I'm not in a good shape")

Python 2
It's simple; pass the traceback as the third argument to raise.
import sys
class MyException(Exception): pass
try:
raise TypeError("test")
except TypeError, e:
raise MyException(), None, sys.exc_info()[2]
Always do this when catching one exception and re-raising another.

Python 3 has the raise ... from clause to chain exceptions. Glenn's answer is great for Python 2.7, but it only uses the original exception's traceback and throws away the error message and other details. Here are some examples in Python 2.7 that add context information from the current scope into the original exception's error message, but keep other details intact.
Known Exception Type
try:
sock_common = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy(rpc_url+'/common')
self.user_id = sock_common.login(self.dbname, username, self.pwd)
except IOError:
_, ex, traceback = sys.exc_info()
message = "Connecting to '%s': %s." % (config['connection'],
ex.strerror)
raise IOError, (ex.errno, message), traceback
That flavour of raise statement takes the exception type as the first expression, the exception class constructor arguments in a tuple as the second expression, and the traceback as the third expression. If you're running earlier than Python 2.2, see the warnings on sys.exc_info().
Any Exception Type
Here's another example that's more general purpose if you don't know what kind of exceptions your code might have to catch. The downside is that it loses the exception type and just raises a RuntimeError. You have to import the traceback module.
except Exception:
extype, ex, tb = sys.exc_info()
formatted = traceback.format_exception_only(extype, ex)[-1]
message = "Importing row %d, %s" % (rownum, formatted)
raise RuntimeError, message, tb
Modify the Message
Here's another option if the exception type will let you add context to it. You can modify the exception's message and then reraise it.
import subprocess
try:
final_args = ['lsx', '/home']
s = subprocess.check_output(final_args)
except OSError as ex:
ex.strerror += ' for command {}'.format(final_args)
raise
That generates the following stack trace:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/mnt/data/don/workspace/scratch/scratch.py", line 5, in <module>
s = subprocess.check_output(final_args)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 566, in check_output
process = Popen(stdout=PIPE, *popenargs, **kwargs)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 710, in __init__
errread, errwrite)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 1327, in _execute_child
raise child_exception
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory for command ['lsx', '/home']
You can see that it shows the line where check_output() was called, but the exception message now includes the command line.

In Python 3.x:
raise Exception('Failed to process file ' + filePath).with_traceback(e.__traceback__)
or simply
except Exception:
raise MyException()
which will propagate MyException but print both exceptions if it will not be handled.
In Python 2.x:
raise Exception, 'Failed to process file ' + filePath, e
You can prevent printing both exceptions by killing the __context__ attribute. Here I write a context manager using that to catch and change your exception on the fly:
(see http://docs.python.org/3.1/library/stdtypes.html for expanation of how they work)
try: # Wrap the whole program into the block that will kill __context__.
class Catcher(Exception):
'''This context manager reraises an exception under a different name.'''
def __init__(self, name):
super().__init__('Failed to process code in {!r}'.format(name))
def __enter__(self):
return self
def __exit__(self, exc_type, exc_val, exc_tb):
if exc_type is not None:
self.__traceback__ = exc_tb
raise self
...
with Catcher('class definition'):
class a:
def spam(self):
# not really pass, but you get the idea
pass
lut = [1,
3,
17,
[12,34],
5,
_spam]
assert a().lut[-1] == a.spam
...
except Catcher as e:
e.__context__ = None
raise

I don't think you can do this in Python 2.x, but something similar to this functionality is part of Python 3. From PEP 3134:
In today's Python implementation, exceptions are composed of three
parts: the type, the value, and the traceback. The 'sys' module,
exposes the current exception in three parallel variables, exc_type,
exc_value, and exc_traceback, the sys.exc_info() function returns a
tuple of these three parts, and the 'raise' statement has a
three-argument form accepting these three parts. Manipulating
exceptions often requires passing these three things in parallel,
which can be tedious and error-prone. Additionally, the 'except'
statement can only provide access to the value, not the traceback.
Adding the 'traceback' attribute to exception values makes all
the exception information accessible from a single place.
Comparison to C#:
Exceptions in C# contain a read-only 'InnerException' property that
may point to another exception. Its documentation [10] says that
"When an exception X is thrown as a direct result of a previous
exception Y, the InnerException property of X should contain a
reference to Y." This property is not set by the VM automatically;
rather, all exception constructors take an optional 'innerException'
argument to set it explicitly. The 'cause' attribute fulfills
the same purpose as InnerException, but this PEP proposes a new form
of 'raise' rather than extending the constructors of all exceptions.
C# also provides a GetBaseException method that jumps directly to
the end of the InnerException chain; this PEP proposes no analog.
Note also that Java, Ruby and Perl 5 don't support this type of thing either. Quoting again:
As for other languages, Java and Ruby both discard the original
exception when another exception occurs in a 'catch'/'rescue' or
'finally'/'ensure' clause. Perl 5 lacks built-in structured
exception handling. For Perl 6, RFC number 88 [9] proposes an exception
mechanism that implicitly retains chained exceptions in an array
named ##.

For maximum compatibility between Python 2 and 3, you can use raise_from in the six library. https://six.readthedocs.io/#six.raise_from . Here is your example (slightly modified for clarity):
import six
try:
ProcessFile(filePath)
except Exception as e:
six.raise_from(IOError('Failed to process file ' + repr(filePath)), e)

You could use my CausedException class to chain exceptions in Python 2.x (and even in Python 3 it can be useful in case you want to give more than one caught exception as cause to a newly raised exception). Maybe it can help you.

Maybe you could grab the relevant information and pass it up? I'm thinking something like:
import traceback
import sys
import StringIO
class ApplicationError:
def __init__(self, value, e):
s = StringIO.StringIO()
traceback.print_exc(file=s)
self.value = (value, s.getvalue())
def __str__(self):
return repr(self.value)
try:
try:
a = 1/0
except Exception, e:
raise ApplicationError("Failed to process file", e)
except Exception, e:
print e

Assuming:
you need a solution, which works for Python 2 (for pure Python 3 see raise ... from solution)
just want to enrich the error message, e.g. providing some additional context
need the full stack trace
you can use a simple solution from the docs https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/errors.html#raising-exceptions:
try:
raise NameError('HiThere')
except NameError:
print 'An exception flew by!' # print or log, provide details about context
raise # reraise the original exception, keeping full stack trace
The output:
An exception flew by!
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 2, in ?
NameError: HiThere
It looks like the key piece is the simplified 'raise' keyword that stands alone. That will re-raise the Exception in the except block.