How to generate java like stack trace in python?

Question

In my experience programming with Java, I have become quite fond of the stack traces it generates when my code goes awry, but I feel that the traces generated by python are a bit lacking by comparison. For example, a trace in java might look like this:

java.lang.RuntimeException
    at test.package.Example.c(Example.java:20)
    at test.package.Example.b(Example.java:15)
    at test.package.Example.a(Example.java:10)

Whereas a python trace might look like this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "example.py", line 10, in <module>
    a()
  File "example.py", line 2, in a
    b()
  File "example.py", line 5, in b
    c()
  File "example.py", line 8, in c
    raise Exception
Exception

While both of these traces convey basically the same information, I personally find that the trace from java is easier to follow.

Is there a means to change the format python uses for printing its stack traces, or would that sort of change require me to create a custom exception handler at the root of my program?

What specifically do you not like (and want to change) about the Python format? It looks to me like the Python format is giving you more information than the Java format, because it's showing you the actual content of the offending line of code. — BrenBarn
– BrenBarn, Commented Oct 27, 2016 at 18:13
@BrenBarn I feel like it's giving me more information than I need to have. When I'm writing larger programs, sometimes my stack trace can have 15 or more entries, and 15 extra lines in the console makes it a lot harder to figure out exactly where the problem is (at least for me). I think that having the line number is enough, since I can always open the code to that point and see for myself. Having a single line of code deprived of context isn't super useful imo. — Nicholas Hollander
– Nicholas Hollander, Commented Oct 27, 2016 at 18:21

Rehan Shikkalgar · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-27 18:34:21Z

3

using traceback module

import traceback
try:
    x= 1/0
except Exception as e:
    print(e)
    traceback.print_exc()

answered Oct 27, 2016 at 18:34

Rehan Shikkalgar

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Glemi Over a year ago

This doesn't answer the question at all. You get exactly the same stack trace output as you normally do whithout using traceback.print_exec() explicitly.

BrenBarn · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-28 03:17:40Z

There is a means to change the format Python uses to format its stack traces, and that is that you write your own formatter instead. There is only one built-in format.

You can assign your own function to sys.excepthook and it will act as a top-level exception handler that will get access to exceptions that were about to rise uncaught and cause the program to exit. There you can make use of the traceback object to format things however you like. Triptych's answer shows how to use the traceback module to get the info for each stack frame. extract_tb returns a 4-tuple of the filename, line number, function, and source text of the offending line, so if you want to not display the source text you could just throw that away and concatenate the rest. But you'll have to do the work of constructing whatever output you want to see.

Kenan Banks · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-27 18:04:53Z

1

If you really want to, you can reformat exception tracebacks with the traceback.extract_tb method.

ref: https://docs.python.org/2/library/traceback.html#traceback.extract_tb

answered Oct 27, 2016 at 18:04

Kenan Banks

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