Understanding the Python Traceback

Python Traceback Overview

There are several sections to every Python traceback that are important. The diagram below highlights the various parts:

In Python, it’s best to read the traceback from the bottom up:

1. Blue box: The last line of the traceback is the error message line. It contains the exception name that was raised.

2. Green box: After the exception name is the error message. This message usually contains helpful information for understanding the reason for the exception being raised.

3. Yellow box: Further up the traceback are the various function calls moving from bottom to top, most recent to least recent. These calls are represented by two-line entries for each call. The first line of each call contains information like the file name, line number, and module name, all specifying where the code can be found.

4. Red underline: The second line for these calls contains the actual code that was executed.

There are a few differences between traceback output when you’re executing your code in the command-line and running code in the REPL. Below is the same code from the previous section executed in a REPL and the resulting traceback output:

>>> def greet(someone):
...   print('Hello, ' + someon)
... 
>>> greet('Chad')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in greet
NameError: name 'someon' is not defined

Notice that in place of file names, you get "<stdin>". This makes sense since you typed the code in through standard input. Also, the executed lines of code are not displayed in the traceback.

Specific Traceback Walkthrough

Going through some specific traceback output will help you better understand and see what information the traceback will give you.

The code below is used in the examples following to illustrate the information a Python traceback gives you:

# greetings.py
def who_to_greet(person):
    return person if person else input('Greet who? ')

def greet(someone, greeting='Hello'):
    print(greeting + ', ' + who_to_greet(someone))

def greet_many(people):
    for person in people:
        try:
            greet(person)
        except Exception:
            print('hi, ' + person)

Here, who_to_greet() takes a value, person, and either returns it or prompts for a value to return instead.

Then, greet() takes a name to be greeted, someone, and an optional greeting value and calls print(). who_to_greet() is also called with the someone value passed in.

Finally, greet_many() will iterate over the list of people and call greet(). If there is an exception raised by calling greet(), then a simple backup greeting is printed.

This code doesn’t have any bugs that would result in an exception being raised as long as the right input is provided.

If you add a call to greet() to the bottom of greetings.py and specify a keyword argument that it isn’t expecting (for example greet('Chad', greting='Yo')), then you’ll get the following traceback:

$ python example.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/path/to/greetings.py", line 19, in <module>
    greet('Chad', greting='Yo')
TypeError: greet() got an unexpected keyword argument 'greting'

Once again, with a Python traceback, it’s best to work backward, moving up the output. Starting at the final line of the traceback, you can see that the exception was a TypeError. The messages that follow the exception type, everything after the colon, give you some great information. It tells you that greet() was called with a keyword argument that it didn’t expect. The unknown argument name is also given to you: greting.

Moving up, you can see the line that resulted in the exception. In this case, it’s the greet() call that we added to the bottom of greetings.py.

The next line up gives you the path to the file where the code exists, the line number of that file where the code can be found, and which module it’s in. In this case, because our code isn’t using any other Python modules, we just see <module> here, meaning that this is the file that is being executed.

With a different file and different input, you can see the traceback really pointing you in the right direction to find the issue. If you are following along, remove the buggy greet() call from the bottom of greetings.py and add the following file to your directory:

# example.py
from greetings import greet

greet(1)

Here you’ve set up another Python file that is importing your previous module, greetings.py, and using greet() from it. Here’s what happens if you now run example.py:

$ python example.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/path/to/example.py", line 3, in <module>
    greet(1)
  File "/path/to/greetings.py", line 5, in greet
    print(greeting + ', ' + who_to_greet(someone))
TypeError: must be str, not int

The exception raised in this case is a TypeError again, but this time the message is a little less helpful. It tells you that somewhere in the code it was expecting to work with a string, but an integer was given.

Moving up, you see the line of code that was executed. Then the file and line number of the code. This time, however, instead of <module>, we get the name of the function that was being executed, greet().

Moving up to the next executed line of code, we see our problematic greet() call passing in an integer.

Sometimes after an exception is raised, another bit of code catches that exception and also results in an exception. In these situations, Python will output all exception tracebacks in the order in which they were received, once again ending in the most recently raise exception’s traceback.

Since this can be a little confusing, here’s an example. Add a call to greet_many() to the bottom of greetings.py:

# greetings.py
...
greet_many(['Chad', 'Dan', 1])

This should result in printing greetings to all three people. However, if you run this code, you’ll see an example of the multiple tracebacks being output:

$ python greetings.py
Hello, Chad
Hello, Dan
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "greetings.py", line 10, in greet_many
    greet(person)
  File "greetings.py", line 5, in greet
    print(greeting + ', ' + who_to_greet(someone))
TypeError: must be str, not int

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "greetings.py", line 14, in <module>
    greet_many(['Chad', 'Dan', 1])
  File "greetings.py", line 12, in greet_many
    print('hi, ' + person)
TypeError: must be str, not int

Notice the highlighted line starting with During handling in the output above. In between all tracebacks, you’ll see this line. Its message is very clear, while your code was trying to handle the previous exception, another exception was raised.

You have seen the previous exception before, when you called greet() with an integer. Since we added a 1 to the list of people to greet, we can expect the same result. However, the function greet_many() wraps the greet() call in a try and except block. Just in case greet() results in an exception being raised, greet_many() wants to print a default greeting.

The relevant portion of greetings.py is repeated here:

def greet_many(people):
    for person in people:
        try:
            greet(person)
        except Exception:
            print('hi, ' + person)

So when greet() results in the TypeError because of the bad integer input, greet_many() handles that exception and attempts to print a simple greeting. Here the code ends up resulting in another, similar, exception. It’s still attempting to add a string and an integer.

Seeing all of the traceback output can help you see what might be the real cause of an exception. Sometimes when you see the final exception raised, and its resulting traceback, you still can’t see what’s wrong. In those cases, moving up to the previous exceptions usually gives you a better idea of the root cause.

AttributeError

The AttributeError is raised when you try to access an attribute on an object that doesn’t have that attribute defined. The Python documentation defines when this exception is raised: