Exception Handling

The functions described in this chapter will let you handle and raise Python exceptions. It is important to understand some of the basics of Python exception handling. It works somewhat like the POSIX errno variable: there is a global indicator (per thread) of the last error that occurred. Most C API functions don’t clear this on success, but will set it to indicate the cause of the error on failure. Most C API functions also return an error indicator, usually NULL if they are supposed to return a pointer, or -1 if they return an integer (exception: the PyArg_* functions return 1 for success and 0 for failure).

Concretely, the error indicator consists of three object pointers: the exception’s type, the exception’s value, and the traceback object. Any of those pointers can be NULL if non-set (although some combinations are forbidden, for example you can’t have a non-NULL traceback if the exception type is NULL).

When a function must fail because some function it called failed, it generally doesn’t set the error indicator; the function it called already set it. It is responsible for either handling the error and clearing the exception or returning after cleaning up any resources it holds (such as object references or memory allocations); it should not continue normally if it is not prepared to handle the error. If returning due to an error, it is important to indicate to the caller that an error has been set. If the error is not handled or carefully propagated, additional calls into the Python/C API may not behave as intended and may fail in mysterious ways.

Note

The error indicator is not the result of sys.exc_info(). The former corresponds to an exception that is not yet caught (and is therefore still propagating), while the latter returns an exception after it is caught (and has therefore stopped propagating).

Printing and clearing

void PyErr_Clear()

Part of the Stable ABI.

Clear the error indicator. If the error indicator is not set, there is no effect.

void PyErr_PrintEx(int set_sys_last_vars)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Print a standard traceback to sys.stderr and clear the error indicator. Unless the error is a SystemExit, in that case no traceback is printed and the Python process will exit with the error code specified by the SystemExit instance.

Call this function only when the error indicator is set. Otherwise it will cause a fatal error!

If set_sys_last_vars is nonzero, the variables sys.last_type, sys.last_value and sys.last_traceback will be set to the type, value and traceback of the printed exception, respectively.

void PyErr_Print()

Part of the Stable ABI.

Alias for PyErr_PrintEx(1).

void PyErr_WriteUnraisable(PyObject *obj)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Call sys.unraisablehook() using the current exception and obj argument.

This utility function prints a warning message to sys.stderr when an exception has been set but it is impossible for the interpreter to actually raise the exception. It is used, for example, when an exception occurs in an __del__() method.

The function is called with a single argument obj that identifies the context in which the unraisable exception occurred. If possible, the repr of obj will be printed in the warning message.

An exception must be set when calling this function.

Raising exceptions

These functions help you set the current thread’s error indicator. For convenience, some of these functions will always return a NULL pointer for use in a return statement.

void PyErr_SetString(PyObject *type, const char *message)

Part of the Stable ABI.

This is the most common way to set the error indicator. The first argument specifies the exception type; it is normally one of the standard exceptions, e.g. PyExc_RuntimeError. You need not increment its reference count. The second argument is an error message; it is decoded from 'utf-8'.

void PyErr_SetObject(PyObject *type, PyObject *value)

Part of the Stable ABI.

This function is similar to PyErr_SetString() but lets you specify an arbitrary Python object for the “value” of the exception.

PyObject *PyErr_Format(PyObject *exception, const char *format, ...)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI.

This function sets the error indicator and returns NULL. exception should be a Python exception class. The format and subsequent parameters help format the error message; they have the same meaning and values as in PyUnicode_FromFormat(). format is an ASCII-encoded string.

PyObject *PyErr_FormatV(PyObject *exception, const char *format, va_list vargs)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.5.

Same as PyErr_Format(), but taking a va_list argument rather than a variable number of arguments.

New in version 3.5.

void PyErr_SetNone(PyObject *type)

Part of the Stable ABI.

This is a shorthand for PyErr_SetObject(type, Py_None).

int PyErr_BadArgument()

Part of the Stable ABI.

This is a shorthand for PyErr_SetString(PyExc_TypeError, message), where message indicates that a built-in operation was invoked with an illegal argument. It is mostly for internal use.

PyObject *PyErr_NoMemory()

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI.

This is a shorthand for PyErr_SetNone(PyExc_MemoryError); it returns NULL so an object allocation function can write return PyErr_NoMemory(); when it runs out of memory.

PyObject *PyErr_SetFromErrno(PyObject *type)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI.

This is a convenience function to raise an exception when a C library function has returned an error and set the C variable errno. It constructs a tuple object whose first item is the integer errno value and whose second item is the corresponding error message (gotten from strerror()), and then calls PyErr_SetObject(type, object). On Unix, when the errno value is EINTR, indicating an interrupted system call, this calls PyErr_CheckSignals(), and if that set the error indicator, leaves it set to that. The function always returns NULL, so a wrapper function around a system call can write return PyErr_SetFromErrno(type); when the system call returns an error.

PyObject *PyErr_SetFromErrnoWithFilenameObject(PyObject *type, PyObject *filenameObject)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI.

Similar to PyErr_SetFromErrno(), with the additional behavior that if filenameObject is not NULL, it is passed to the constructor of type as a third parameter. In the case of OSError exception, this is used to define the filename attribute of the exception instance.

PyObject *PyErr_SetFromErrnoWithFilenameObjects(PyObject *type, PyObject *filenameObject, PyObject *filenameObject2)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.7.

Similar to PyErr_SetFromErrnoWithFilenameObject(), but takes a second filename object, for raising errors when a function that takes two filenames fails.

New in version 3.4.

PyObject *PyErr_SetFromErrnoWithFilename(PyObject *type, const char *filename)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI.

Similar to PyErr_SetFromErrnoWithFilenameObject(), but the filename is given as a C string. filename is decoded from the filesystem encoding and error handler.

PyObject *PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(int ierr)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI on Windows since version 3.7.

This is a convenience function to raise WindowsError. If called with ierr of 0, the error code returned by a call to GetLastError() is used instead. It calls the Win32 function FormatMessage() to retrieve the Windows description of error code given by ierr or GetLastError(), then it constructs a tuple object whose first item is the ierr value and whose second item is the corresponding error message (gotten from FormatMessage()), and then calls PyErr_SetObject(PyExc_WindowsError, object). This function always returns NULL.

Availability: Windows.

PyObject *PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr(PyObject *type, int ierr)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI on Windows since version 3.7.

Similar to PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), with an additional parameter specifying the exception type to be raised.

Availability: Windows.

PyObject *PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename(int ierr, const char *filename)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI on Windows since version 3.7.

Similar to PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilenameObject(), but the filename is given as a C string. filename is decoded from the filesystem encoding (os.fsdecode()).

Availability: Windows.

PyObject *PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilenameObject(PyObject *type, int ierr, PyObject *filename)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI on Windows since version 3.7.

Similar to PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilenameObject(), with an additional parameter specifying the exception type to be raised.

Availability: Windows.

PyObject *PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilenameObjects(PyObject *type, int ierr, PyObject *filename, PyObject *filename2)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI on Windows since version 3.7.

Similar to PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilenameObject(), but accepts a second filename object.

Availability: Windows.

New in version 3.4.

PyObject *PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(PyObject *type, int ierr, const char *filename)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI on Windows since version 3.7.

Similar to PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename(), with an additional parameter specifying the exception type to be raised.

Availability: Windows.

PyObject *PyErr_SetImportError(PyObject *msg, PyObject *name, PyObject *path)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.7.

This is a convenience function to raise ImportError. msg will be set as the exception’s message string. name and path, both of which can be NULL, will be set as the ImportError’s respective name and path attributes.

New in version 3.3.

PyObject *PyErr_SetImportErrorSubclass(PyObject *exception, PyObject *msg, PyObject *name, PyObject *path)

Return value: Always NULL. Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.6.

Much like PyErr_SetImportError() but this function allows for specifying a subclass of ImportError to raise.

New in version 3.6.

void PyErr_SyntaxLocationObject(PyObject *filename, int lineno, int col_offset)

Set file, line, and offset information for the current exception. If the current exception is not a SyntaxError, then it sets additional attributes, which make the exception printing subsystem think the exception is a SyntaxError.

New in version 3.4.

void PyErr_SyntaxLocationEx(const char *filename, int lineno, int col_offset)

Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.7.

Like PyErr_SyntaxLocationObject(), but filename is a byte string decoded from the filesystem encoding and error handler.

New in version 3.2.

void PyErr_SyntaxLocation(const char *filename, int lineno)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Like PyErr_SyntaxLocationEx(), but the col_offset parameter is omitted.

void PyErr_BadInternalCall()

Part of the Stable ABI.

This is a shorthand for PyErr_SetString(PyExc_SystemError, message), where message indicates that an internal operation (e.g. a Python/C API function) was invoked with an illegal argument. It is mostly for internal use.

Issuing warnings

Use these functions to issue warnings from C code. They mirror similar functions exported by the Python warnings module. They normally print a warning message to sys.stderr; however, it is also possible that the user has specified that warnings are to be turned into errors, and in that case they will raise an exception. It is also possible that the functions raise an exception because of a problem with the warning machinery. The return value is 0 if no exception is raised, or -1 if an exception is raised. (It is not possible to determine whether a warning message is actually printed, nor what the reason is for the exception; this is intentional.) If an exception is raised, the caller should do its normal exception handling (for example, Py_DECREF() owned references and return an error value).

int PyErr_WarnEx(PyObject *category, const char *message, Py_ssize_t stack_level)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Issue a warning message. The category argument is a warning category (see below) or NULL; the message argument is a UTF-8 encoded string. stack_level is a positive number giving a number of stack frames; the warning will be issued from the currently executing line of code in that stack frame. A stack_level of 1 is the function calling PyErr_WarnEx(), 2 is the function above that, and so forth.

Warning categories must be subclasses of PyExc_Warning; PyExc_Warning is a subclass of PyExc_Exception; the default warning category is PyExc_RuntimeWarning. The standard Python warning categories are available as global variables whose names are enumerated at Standard Warning Categories.

For information about warning control, see the documentation for the warnings module and the -W option in the command line documentation. There is no C API for warning control.

int PyErr_WarnExplicitObject(PyObject *category, PyObject *message, PyObject *filename, int lineno, PyObject *module, PyObject *registry)

Issue a warning message with explicit control over all warning attributes. This is a straightforward wrapper around the Python function warnings.warn_explicit(); see there for more information. The module and registry arguments may be set to NULL to get the default effect described there.

New in version 3.4.

int PyErr_WarnExplicit(PyObject *category, const char *message, const char *filename, int lineno, const char *module, PyObject *registry)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Similar to PyErr_WarnExplicitObject() except that message and module are UTF-8 encoded strings, and filename is decoded from the filesystem encoding and error handler.

int PyErr_WarnFormat(PyObject *category, Py_ssize_t stack_level, const char *format, ...)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Function similar to PyErr_WarnEx(), but use PyUnicode_FromFormat() to format the warning message. format is an ASCII-encoded string.

New in version 3.2.

int PyErr_ResourceWarning(PyObject *source, Py_ssize_t stack_level, const char *format, ...)

Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.6.

Function similar to PyErr_WarnFormat(), but category is ResourceWarning and it passes source to warnings.WarningMessage().

New in version 3.6.

Querying the error indicator

PyObject *PyErr_Occurred()

Return value: Borrowed reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Test whether the error indicator is set. If set, return the exception type (the first argument to the last call to one of the PyErr_Set* functions or to PyErr_Restore()). If not set, return NULL. You do not own a reference to the return value, so you do not need to Py_DECREF() it.

The caller must hold the GIL.

Note

Do not compare the return value to a specific exception; use PyErr_ExceptionMatches() instead, shown below. (The comparison could easily fail since the exception may be an instance instead of a class, in the case of a class exception, or it may be a subclass of the expected exception.)

int PyErr_ExceptionMatches(PyObject *exc)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Equivalent to PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches(PyErr_Occurred(), exc). This should only be called when an exception is actually set; a memory access violation will occur if no exception has been raised.

int PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches(PyObject *given, PyObject *exc)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Return true if the given exception matches the exception type in exc. If exc is a class object, this also returns true when given is an instance of a subclass. If exc is a tuple, all exception types in the tuple (and recursively in subtuples) are searched for a match.

void PyErr_Fetch(PyObject **ptype, PyObject **pvalue, PyObject **ptraceback)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Retrieve the error indicator into three variables whose addresses are passed. If the error indicator is not set, set all three variables to NULL. If it is set, it will be cleared and you own a reference to each object retrieved. The value and traceback object may be NULL even when the type object is not.

Note

This function is normally only used by code that needs to catch exceptions or by code that needs to save and restore the error indicator temporarily, e.g.:

{
   PyObject *type, *value, *traceback;
   PyErr_Fetch(&type, &value, &traceback);

   /* ... code that might produce other errors ... */

   PyErr_Restore(type, value, traceback);
}

void PyErr_Restore(PyObject *type, PyObject *value, PyObject *traceback)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Set the error indicator from the three objects. If the error indicator is already set, it is cleared first. If the objects are NULL, the error indicator is cleared. Do not pass a NULL type and non-NULL value or traceback. The exception type should be a class. Do not pass an invalid exception type or value. (Violating these rules will cause subtle problems later.) This call takes away a reference to each object: you must own a reference to each object before the call and after the call you no longer own these references. (If you don’t understand this, don’t use this function. I warned you.)

Note

This function is normally only used by code that needs to save and restore the error indicator temporarily. Use PyErr_Fetch() to save the current error indicator.

void PyErr_NormalizeException(PyObject **exc, PyObject **val, PyObject **tb)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Under certain circumstances, the values returned by PyErr_Fetch() below can be “unnormalized”, meaning that *exc is a class object but *val is not an instance of the same class. This function can be used to instantiate the class in that case. If the values are already normalized, nothing happens. The delayed normalization is implemented to improve performance.

Note

This function does not implicitly set the __traceback__ attribute on the exception value. If setting the traceback appropriately is desired, the following additional snippet is needed:

if (tb != NULL) {
  PyException_SetTraceback(val, tb);
}

PyObject *PyErr_GetHandledException(void)

Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.11.

Retrieve the active exception instance, as would be returned by sys.exception(). This refers to an exception that was already caught, not to an exception that was freshly raised. Returns a new reference to the exception or NULL. Does not modify the interpreter’s exception state.

Note

This function is not normally used by code that wants to handle exceptions. Rather, it can be used when code needs to save and restore the exception state temporarily. Use PyErr_SetHandledException() to restore or clear the exception state.

New in version 3.11.

void PyErr_SetHandledException(PyObject *exc)

Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.11.

Set the active exception, as known from sys.exception(). This refers to an exception that was already caught, not to an exception that was freshly raised. To clear the exception state, pass NULL.

Note

This function is not normally used by code that wants to handle exceptions. Rather, it can be used when code needs to save and restore the exception state temporarily. Use PyErr_GetHandledException() to get the exception state.

New in version 3.11.

void PyErr_GetExcInfo(PyObject **ptype, PyObject **pvalue, PyObject **ptraceback)

Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.7.

Retrieve the old-style representation of the exception info, as known from sys.exc_info(). This refers to an exception that was already caught, not to an exception that was freshly raised. Returns new references for the three objects, any of which may be NULL. Does not modify the exception info state. This function is kept for backwards compatibility. Prefer using PyErr_GetHandledException().

Note

This function is not normally used by code that wants to handle exceptions. Rather, it can be used when code needs to save and restore the exception state temporarily. Use PyErr_SetExcInfo() to restore or clear the exception state.

New in version 3.3.

void PyErr_SetExcInfo(PyObject *type, PyObject *value, PyObject *traceback)

Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.7.

Set the exception info, as known from sys.exc_info(). This refers to an exception that was already caught, not to an exception that was freshly raised. This function steals the references of the arguments. To clear the exception state, pass NULL for all three arguments. This function is kept for backwards compatibility. Prefer using PyErr_SetHandledException().

Note

This function is not normally used by code that wants to handle exceptions. Rather, it can be used when code needs to save and restore the exception state temporarily. Use PyErr_GetExcInfo() to read the exception state.

New in version 3.3.

Changed in version 3.11: The type and traceback arguments are no longer used and can be NULL. The interpreter now derives them from the exception instance (the value argument). The function still steals references of all three arguments.

Signal Handling

int PyErr_CheckSignals()

Part of the Stable ABI.

This function interacts with Python’s signal handling.

If the function is called from the main thread and under the main Python interpreter, it checks whether a signal has been sent to the processes and if so, invokes the corresponding signal handler. If the signal module is supported, this can invoke a signal handler written in Python.

The function attempts to handle all pending signals, and then returns 0. However, if a Python signal handler raises an exception, the error indicator is set and the function returns -1 immediately (such that other pending signals may not have been handled yet: they will be on the next PyErr_CheckSignals() invocation).

If the function is called from a non-main thread, or under a non-main Python interpreter, it does nothing and returns 0.

This function can be called by long-running C code that wants to be interruptible by user requests (such as by pressing Ctrl-C).

Note

The default Python signal handler for SIGINT raises the KeyboardInterrupt exception.

void PyErr_SetInterrupt()

Part of the Stable ABI.

Simulate the effect of a SIGINT signal arriving. This is equivalent to PyErr_SetInterruptEx(SIGINT).

Note

This function is async-signal-safe. It can be called without the GIL and from a C signal handler.

int PyErr_SetInterruptEx(int signum)

Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.10.

Simulate the effect of a signal arriving. The next time PyErr_CheckSignals() is called, the Python signal handler for the given signal number will be called.

This function can be called by C code that sets up its own signal handling and wants Python signal handlers to be invoked as expected when an interruption is requested (for example when the user presses Ctrl-C to interrupt an operation).

If the given signal isn’t handled by Python (it was set to signal.SIG_DFL or signal.SIG_IGN), it will be ignored.

If signum is outside of the allowed range of signal numbers, -1 is returned. Otherwise, 0 is returned. The error indicator is never changed by this function.

Note

This function is async-signal-safe. It can be called without the GIL and from a C signal handler.

New in version 3.10.

int PySignal_SetWakeupFd(int fd)

This utility function specifies a file descriptor to which the signal number is written as a single byte whenever a signal is received. fd must be non-blocking. It returns the previous such file descriptor.

The value -1 disables the feature; this is the initial state. This is equivalent to signal.set_wakeup_fd() in Python, but without any error checking. fd should be a valid file descriptor. The function should only be called from the main thread.

Changed in version 3.5: On Windows, the function now also supports socket handles.

Exception Classes

PyObject *PyErr_NewException(const char *name, PyObject *base, PyObject *dict)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

This utility function creates and returns a new exception class. The name argument must be the name of the new exception, a C string of the form module.classname. The base and dict arguments are normally NULL. This creates a class object derived from Exception (accessible in C as PyExc_Exception).

The __module__ attribute of the new class is set to the first part (up to the last dot) of the name argument, and the class name is set to the last part (after the last dot). The base argument can be used to specify alternate base classes; it can either be only one class or a tuple of classes. The dict argument can be used to specify a dictionary of class variables and methods.

PyObject *PyErr_NewExceptionWithDoc(const char *name, const char *doc, PyObject *base, PyObject *dict)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Same as PyErr_NewException(), except that the new exception class can easily be given a docstring: If doc is non-NULL, it will be used as the docstring for the exception class.

New in version 3.2.

Exception Objects

PyObject *PyException_GetTraceback(PyObject *ex)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return the traceback associated with the exception as a new reference, as accessible from Python through __traceback__. If there is no traceback associated, this returns NULL.

int PyException_SetTraceback(PyObject *ex, PyObject *tb)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Set the traceback associated with the exception to tb. Use Py_None to clear it.

PyObject *PyException_GetContext(PyObject *ex)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return the context (another exception instance during whose handling ex was raised) associated with the exception as a new reference, as accessible from Python through __context__. If there is no context associated, this returns NULL.

void PyException_SetContext(PyObject *ex, PyObject *ctx)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Set the context associated with the exception to ctx. Use NULL to clear it. There is no type check to make sure that ctx is an exception instance. This steals a reference to ctx.

PyObject *PyException_GetCause(PyObject *ex)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return the cause (either an exception instance, or None, set by raise ... from ...) associated with the exception as a new reference, as accessible from Python through __cause__.

void PyException_SetCause(PyObject *ex, PyObject *cause)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Set the cause associated with the exception to cause. Use NULL to clear it. There is no type check to make sure that cause is either an exception instance or None. This steals a reference to cause.

__suppress_context__ is implicitly set to True by this function.

Unicode Exception Objects

The following functions are used to create and modify Unicode exceptions from C.

PyObject *PyUnicodeDecodeError_Create(const char *encoding, const char *object, Py_ssize_t length, Py_ssize_t start, Py_ssize_t end, const char *reason)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Create a UnicodeDecodeError object with the attributes encoding, object, length, start, end and reason. encoding and reason are UTF-8 encoded strings.

PyObject *PyUnicodeDecodeError_GetEncoding(PyObject *exc)

PyObject *PyUnicodeEncodeError_GetEncoding(PyObject *exc)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return the encoding attribute of the given exception object.

PyObject *PyUnicodeDecodeError_GetObject(PyObject *exc)

PyObject *PyUnicodeEncodeError_GetObject(PyObject *exc)

PyObject *PyUnicodeTranslateError_GetObject(PyObject *exc)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return the object attribute of the given exception object.

int PyUnicodeDecodeError_GetStart(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t *start)

int PyUnicodeEncodeError_GetStart(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t *start)

int PyUnicodeTranslateError_GetStart(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t *start)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Get the start attribute of the given exception object and place it into *start. start must not be NULL. Return 0 on success, -1 on failure.

int PyUnicodeDecodeError_SetStart(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t start)

int PyUnicodeEncodeError_SetStart(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t start)

int PyUnicodeTranslateError_SetStart(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t start)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Set the start attribute of the given exception object to start. Return 0 on success, -1 on failure.

int PyUnicodeDecodeError_GetEnd(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t *end)

int PyUnicodeEncodeError_GetEnd(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t *end)

int PyUnicodeTranslateError_GetEnd(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t *end)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Get the end attribute of the given exception object and place it into *end. end must not be NULL. Return 0 on success, -1 on failure.

int PyUnicodeDecodeError_SetEnd(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t end)

int PyUnicodeEncodeError_SetEnd(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t end)

int PyUnicodeTranslateError_SetEnd(PyObject *exc, Py_ssize_t end)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Set the end attribute of the given exception object to end. Return 0 on success, -1 on failure.

PyObject *PyUnicodeDecodeError_GetReason(PyObject *exc)

PyObject *PyUnicodeEncodeError_GetReason(PyObject *exc)

PyObject *PyUnicodeTranslateError_GetReason(PyObject *exc)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return the reason attribute of the given exception object.

int PyUnicodeDecodeError_SetReason(PyObject *exc, const char *reason)

int PyUnicodeEncodeError_SetReason(PyObject *exc, const char *reason)

int PyUnicodeTranslateError_SetReason(PyObject *exc, const char *reason)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Set the reason attribute of the given exception object to reason. Return 0 on success, -1 on failure.

Recursion Control

These two functions provide a way to perform safe recursive calls at the C level, both in the core and in extension modules. They are needed if the recursive code does not necessarily invoke Python code (which tracks its recursion depth automatically). They are also not needed for tp_call implementations because the call protocol takes care of recursion handling.

int Py_EnterRecursiveCall(const char *where)

Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.9.

Marks a point where a recursive C-level call is about to be performed.

If USE_STACKCHECK is defined, this function checks if the OS stack overflowed using PyOS_CheckStack(). In this is the case, it sets a MemoryError and returns a nonzero value.

The function then checks if the recursion limit is reached. If this is the case, a RecursionError is set and a nonzero value is returned. Otherwise, zero is returned.

where should be a UTF-8 encoded string such as " in instance check" to be concatenated to the RecursionError message caused by the recursion depth limit.

Changed in version 3.9: This function is now also available in the limited API.

void Py_LeaveRecursiveCall(void)

Part of the Stable ABI since version 3.9.

Ends a Py_EnterRecursiveCall(). Must be called once for each successful invocation of Py_EnterRecursiveCall().

Changed in version 3.9: This function is now also available in the limited API.

Properly implementing tp_repr for container types requires special recursion handling. In addition to protecting the stack, tp_repr also needs to track objects to prevent cycles. The following two functions facilitate this functionality. Effectively, these are the C equivalent to reprlib.recursive_repr().

int Py_ReprEnter(PyObject *object)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Called at the beginning of the tp_repr implementation to detect cycles.

If the object has already been processed, the function returns a positive integer. In that case the tp_repr implementation should return a string object indicating a cycle. As examples, dict objects return {...} and list objects return [...].

The function will return a negative integer if the recursion limit is reached. In that case the tp_repr implementation should typically return NULL.

Otherwise, the function returns zero and the tp_repr implementation can continue normally.

void Py_ReprLeave(PyObject *object)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Ends a Py_ReprEnter(). Must be called once for each invocation of Py_ReprEnter() that returns zero.

Standard Exceptions

All standard Python exceptions are available as global variables whose names are PyExc_ followed by the Python exception name. These have the type PyObject*; they are all class objects. For completeness, here are all the variables:

C Name	Python Name	Notes
PyExc_BaseException	BaseException	1
PyExc_Exception	Exception	1
PyExc_ArithmeticError	ArithmeticError	1
PyExc_AssertionError	AssertionError
PyExc_AttributeError	AttributeError
PyExc_BlockingIOError	BlockingIOError
PyExc_BrokenPipeError	BrokenPipeError
PyExc_BufferError	BufferError
PyExc_ChildProcessError	ChildProcessError
PyExc_ConnectionAbortedError	ConnectionAbortedError
PyExc_ConnectionError	ConnectionError
PyExc_ConnectionRefusedError	ConnectionRefusedError
PyExc_ConnectionResetError	ConnectionResetError
PyExc_EOFError	EOFError
PyExc_FileExistsError	FileExistsError
PyExc_FileNotFoundError	FileNotFoundError
PyExc_FloatingPointError	FloatingPointError
PyExc_GeneratorExit	GeneratorExit
PyExc_ImportError	ImportError
PyExc_IndentationError	IndentationError
PyExc_IndexError	IndexError
PyExc_InterruptedError	InterruptedError
PyExc_IsADirectoryError	IsADirectoryError
PyExc_KeyError	KeyError
PyExc_KeyboardInterrupt	KeyboardInterrupt
PyExc_LookupError	LookupError	1
PyExc_MemoryError	MemoryError
PyExc_ModuleNotFoundError	ModuleNotFoundError
PyExc_NameError	NameError
PyExc_NotADirectoryError	NotADirectoryError
PyExc_NotImplementedError	NotImplementedError
PyExc_OSError	OSError	1
PyExc_OverflowError	OverflowError
PyExc_PermissionError	PermissionError
PyExc_ProcessLookupError	ProcessLookupError
PyExc_RecursionError	RecursionError
PyExc_ReferenceError	ReferenceError
PyExc_RuntimeError	RuntimeError
PyExc_StopAsyncIteration	StopAsyncIteration
PyExc_StopIteration	StopIteration
PyExc_SyntaxError	SyntaxError
PyExc_SystemError	SystemError
PyExc_SystemExit	SystemExit
PyExc_TabError	TabError
PyExc_TimeoutError	TimeoutError
PyExc_TypeError	TypeError
PyExc_UnboundLocalError	UnboundLocalError
PyExc_UnicodeDecodeError	UnicodeDecodeError
PyExc_UnicodeEncodeError	UnicodeEncodeError
PyExc_UnicodeError	UnicodeError
PyExc_UnicodeTranslateError	UnicodeTranslateError
PyExc_ValueError	ValueError
PyExc_ZeroDivisionError	ZeroDivisionError

New in version 3.3: PyExc_BlockingIOError, PyExc_BrokenPipeError, PyExc_ChildProcessError, PyExc_ConnectionError, PyExc_ConnectionAbortedError, PyExc_ConnectionRefusedError, PyExc_ConnectionResetError, PyExc_FileExistsError, PyExc_FileNotFoundError, PyExc_InterruptedError, PyExc_IsADirectoryError, PyExc_NotADirectoryError, PyExc_PermissionError, PyExc_ProcessLookupError and PyExc_TimeoutError were introduced following PEP 3151.

New in version 3.5: PyExc_StopAsyncIteration and PyExc_RecursionError.

New in version 3.6: PyExc_ModuleNotFoundError.

These are compatibility aliases to PyExc_OSError:

C Name	Notes
PyExc_EnvironmentError
PyExc_IOError
PyExc_WindowsError	2

Changed in version 3.3: These aliases used to be separate exception types.

Notes:

1(1,2,3,4,5)

This is a base class for other standard exceptions.

2

Only defined on Windows; protect code that uses this by testing that the preprocessor macro MS_WINDOWS is defined.

Standard Warning Categories

All standard Python warning categories are available as global variables whose names are PyExc_ followed by the Python exception name. These have the type PyObject*; they are all class objects. For completeness, here are all the variables:

C Name	Python Name	Notes
PyExc_Warning	Warning	3
PyExc_BytesWarning	BytesWarning
PyExc_DeprecationWarning	DeprecationWarning
PyExc_FutureWarning	FutureWarning
PyExc_ImportWarning	ImportWarning
PyExc_PendingDeprecationWarning	PendingDeprecationWarning
PyExc_ResourceWarning	ResourceWarning
PyExc_RuntimeWarning	RuntimeWarning
PyExc_SyntaxWarning	SyntaxWarning
PyExc_UnicodeWarning	UnicodeWarning
PyExc_UserWarning	UserWarning

New in version 3.2: PyExc_ResourceWarning.

Notes:

3

This is a base class for other standard warning categories.