Python Errors and Built-in Exceptions

In this tutorial, you will learn about different types of errors and exceptions that are built-in to Python. They are raised whenever the Python interpreter encounters errors.

We can make certain mistakes while writing a program that lead to errors when we try to run it. A python program terminates as soon as it encounters an unhandled error. These errors can be broadly classified into two classes:

1. Syntax errors
2. Logical errors (Exceptions)

1. Python Syntax Errors

Error caused by not following the proper structure (syntax) of the language is called syntax error or parsing error.

Let’s look at one example:

>>> if a < 3
  File "<interactive input>", line 1
    if a < 3
           ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

As shown in the example, an arrow indicates where the parser ran into the syntax error.

We can notice here that a colon : is missing in the if statement.

2. Python Logical Errors (Exceptions)

Errors that occur at runtime (after passing the syntax test) are called exceptions or logical errors.

For instance, they occur when we try to open a file(for reading) that does not exist (FileNotFoundError), try to divide a number by zero (ZeroDivisionError), or try to import a module that does not exist (ImportError).

Whenever these types of runtime errors occur, Python creates an exception object. If not handled properly, it prints a traceback to that error along with some details about why that error occurred.

Let’s look at how Python treats these errors:

>>> 1 / 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<string>", line 301, in runcode
 File "<interactive input>", line 1, in <module>
ZeroDivisionError: division by zero

>>> open("imaginary.txt")
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<string>", line 301, in runcode
 File "<interactive input>", line 1, in <module>
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'imaginary.txt'

3. Python Built-in Exceptions

Illegal operations can raise exceptions. There are plenty of built-in exceptions in Python that are raised when corresponding errors occur. We can view all the built-in exceptions using the built-in local() function as follows:

print(dir(locals()['__builtins__']))

locals()['__builtins__'] will return a module of built-in exceptions, functions, and attributes. dir allows us to list these attributes as strings.

Some of the common built-in exceptions in Python programming along with the error that cause them are listed below:

If required, we can also define our own exceptions in Python. To learn more about them, visit Python User-defined Exceptions.

We can handle these built-in and user-defined exceptions in Python using try, except and finally statements. To learn more about them, visit Python try, except and finally statements.