Package: python2.6
Version: 2.6.6-8+b1
While I was testing the results of SIGINT during Python startup I
observed the following:
zealot:~> spongex
^C
zealot:~> 'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
No command 'spongex' found, did you mean:
Command 'sponge' from package 'moreutils' (main)
spongex: command not found
I typed "spongex" and hit return and almost immediately pressed ^C. I
had 9 copies of "while true; do :; done &" running, to make it more
likely that I would lose interesting races.
As you can see the error message is wrong. It appears that some part
of the Python startup code says:
try:
import site
except e:
print >>sys.stderr, "'import site' failed blah blah"
This is of course a broken exception-handling pattern.
Failure to "import site" should print a better message and not throw
away information about the actual exception. At the very least, only
specific exceptions should be trapped.
This is not specific to KeyboardInterrupt. It's true that a
KeyboardInterrupt exception should not generate the message above, and
that Python's default handling of KeyboardInterrupt is the subject of
a separate bug report I have just submitted; but note that even if
that bug is fixed somehow other "unexpected" exceptions (NameError,
SyntaxError, etc.) should probably not be handled this way either.
Thanks,
Ian.
--
Ian Jackson personal email: <[email protected]>
These opinions are my own. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/
PGP2 key 1024R/0x23f5addb, fingerprint 5906F687 BD03ACAD 0D8E602E FCF37657
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