[Python-Dev] questionable try/except in anydbm.py

[Guido van Rossum]

> I assigned bug 411881 to myself today and started looking through things to
> at least try to whittle down the number of cases that need to be considered.
> Almost immediately I came across this code in anydbm.py:
> 
>     try:
>         class error(Exception):
>             pass
>     except (NameError, TypeError):
>         error = "anydbm.error"
> 
> Is this sort of construct really necessary?  It doesn't seem that
> any other exception definitions in the standard library fall back to
> string exceptions.

This must hark back to the days when there was a command line option
(-X) to make all built-in exceptions string exceptions.  The last
release that supported this was 1.5.2.

So please get rid of it!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)