flake8-blind-except 0.2.1

A flake8 extension that checks for blind, catch-all except: and except Exception: statements.

As of pycodestyle 2.1.0, “E722 do not use bare except, specify exception instead” is built-in. However, bare Exception and BaseException are still allowed. This extension flags them as B902.

Using except without explicitly specifying which exceptions to catch is generally considered bad practice, since it catches system signals like SIGINT. You probably want to handle system interrupts differently than exceptions occurring in your code.

It’s also usually better style to have many small try-except blocks catching specific exceptions instead of a giant try: block with a catch-all except: at the bottom. It’s also nicer to your fellow programmers to be a bit more specific about what exceptions they can expect in specific parts of the code, and what the proper course of action is when they occur.

An example of code that will fail this check is:

try:
    something_scary()
except:
    everybody_panic()

However, the following code is valid:

try:
    something_terrifying()
except TerrifyingException:
    dont_panic()

$ pip install flake8

$ pip install flake8-blind-except

$ flake8 --version
2.0 (pep8: 1.4.6, flake8-blind-except: 0.1.0, pyflakes: 0.7.3)

B901 blind except: statement

B902 blind except Exception: statement