The right way to get a great line from an exception

Question

I want to create a single line line from Exception that tells me what happened where (full backtracking is not required). The following information would be nice:

• file_name / linenumber
• type of exception
• exception description (what do you get from str(e) )
• nice to have: function / method / class

I am currently doing the following:

 import os ... try: os.nonexisting() except Exception as e: t = e.__traceback__ tbf = e.__traceback__.tb_frame print('%s:%d: %s in %s(): "%s" ' % os.path.basename(tbf.f_code.co_filename), t.tb_lineno, e.__class__.__name__, tbf.f_code.co_name, e)) 

which gives me:

 foo.py:203: AttributeError in foo(): "'module' object has no attribute 'nonexisting'" 

Is there a more elegant way to print the details in this example? I think about with. as

 print(e.format('%f: %l: %t %F: "%w"')) 

I would like to avoid importing additional modules except one for this purpose.

Answer 1

I think traceback.format_exception_only does exactly what you want.

 try: os.nonexisting() except Exception as e: print(traceback.format_exception_only(e.__class__, e))