How to catch an exception in python and get a reference to the exception, WITHOUT knowing the type?

Question

I'm wondering how I can catch any raised object (i.e. a type that does not extend `Exception`), and still get a reference to it. I came across the desire to do this when using Jython. When calling a Java method, if that method raises an exception, it will not extend Python's `Exception` class, so a block like this will not catch it: ``` try: # some call to a java lib that raises an exception here except Exception, e: # will never be entered ``` I can do this, but then I have no access to the exception object that was raised. ``` try: # some call to a java lib that raises an exception here except: # will enter here, but there's no reference to the exception that was raised ``` I can solve this by importing the Java exception type and catching it explicitly, but this makes it difficult/impossible to write generic exception handling wrappers/decorators. Is there a way to catch some arbitrary exception and still get a reference to it in the `except` block? I should note that I'm hoping fo…

Accepted Answer

You can reference exceptions using the `sys` module. `sys.exc_info` is a tuple of the type, the instance and the traceback.

```
import sys

try:
    # some call to a java lib that raises an exception here
except:
    instance = sys.exc_info()[1]
```

How to catch an exception in python and get a reference to the exception, WITHOUT knowing the type?

Solution

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