> Why is 'e' ending up as a string rather than the ImportError object? > > This is with Python 2.6.5 if that makes a difference...
It's a known bug in Python 2.6 and earlier. See http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/2.7.html#porting-to-python-2-7 Due to a bug in Python 2.6, the exc_value parameter to __exit__() methods was often the string representation of the exception, not an instance. This was fixed in 2.7, so exc_value will be an instance as expected. (Fixed by Florent Xicluna; issue 7853.) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
