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Python Python Basics All Together Now Handle Exceptions

Isaiah Dicristoforo
Isaiah Dicristoforo
1,135 Points

How do we print out separate error messages for each exception?

In the video, we have a single except block to catch both value errors. If the user does not enter a number, our except block prints a confusing message. If we enter a ticket number greater than the total tickets available, we raise an exception and print out a custom error message. How would we catch each ValueError separately, and print out a descriptive message for each?

5 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,268 Points

One idea is to detect the system messages by their content, and issue a custom replacement. For example:

    except ValueError as err:
        if "invalid literal for int" in err:  # substitute this confusing message
            print("Sorry, but you must enter a number!")
        else:                                 # otherwise print what we got
            print(err)
Isaiah Dicristoforo
Isaiah Dicristoforo
1,135 Points

Thanks for your help! I like your approach.

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,268 Points

The "as" variable is an exception object, which contains the string you passed in. It has a "__str__" override that will return that string if the object is accessed as a string.

Bruno Correia
Bruno Correia
3,114 Points

Steven Parker I tried that but ran into a different TypeError that says that ValueError is not iterable. After checking online I could fix it by changing the code to

if "invalid literal for int" in str(err):

but now I'm confused. Isn't err a string already since it's passed the text that comes from ValueError?

If it helps, this is what I got at first when not using str(err)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "masterticket.py", line 12, in <module>
    num_tickets = int(num_tickets)
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'blue'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "masterticket.py", line 17, in <module>
    if "invalid literal for int" in err:
TypeError: argument of type 'ValueError' is not iterable
Bruno Correia
Bruno Correia
3,114 Points

That's great, thank you!

jaime munoz
jaime munoz
1,438 Points

Great solution thanks!