There are many answers already posted here that show how to get the line number, but it's worth noting that if you want variables containing the "raw data," so to speak, of the stack trace so that you can have more granular control of what you display or how you format it, using the traceback module you can step through the stack frame by frame and look at what's stored in the attributes of the frame summary objects. There are several simple and elegant ways to manipulate the frame summary objects directly. Let's say for example that you want the line number from the last frame in the stack (which tells you which line of code triggered the exception), here's how you could get it by accessing the relevant frame summary object:
Option 1:
import sys
import traceback
try:
# code that raises an exception
except Exception as exc:
exc_type, exc_value, exc_tb = sys.exc_info()
stack_summary = traceback.extract_tb(exc_tb)
end = stack_summary[-1] # or `stack_summary.pop(-1)` if you prefer
Option 2:
import sys
import traceback
try:
# code that raises an exception
except Exception as exc:
tbe = traceback.TracebackException(*sys.exc_info())
end = tbe.stack[-1] # or `tbe.stack.pop(-1)` if you prefer
In either of the above examples, end will be a frame summary object:
>>> type(end)
<class 'traceback.FrameSummary'>
which was in turn taken from a stack summary object:
>>> type(stack_summary) # from option 1
<class 'traceback.StackSummary'>
>>> type(tbe.stack) # from option 2
<class 'traceback.StackSummary'>
The stack summary object behaves like a list and you can iterate through all of the frame summary objects in it however you want in order to trace through the error. The frame summary object (end, in this example), contains the line number and everything else you need to locate where in the code the exception occurred:
>>> print(end.__doc__)
A single frame from a traceback.
- :attr:`filename` The filename for the frame.
- :attr:`lineno` The line within filename for the frame that was
active when the frame was captured.
- :attr:`name` The name of the function or method that was executing
when the frame was captured.
- :attr:`line` The text from the linecache module for the
of code that was running when the frame was captured.
- :attr:`locals` Either None if locals were not supplied, or a dict
mapping the name to the repr() of the variable.
And if you capture the exception object (either from except Exception as exc: syntax or from the second object returned by sys.exc_info()), you will then have everything you need to write your own highly customized error printing/logging function:
err_type = type(exc).__name__
err_msg = str(exc)
Putting it all together:
from datetime import datetime
import sys
import traceback
def print_custom_error_message():
exc_type, exc_value, exc_tb = sys.exc_info()
stack_summary = traceback.extract_tb(exc_tb)
end = stack_summary[-1]
err_type = type(exc_value).__name__
err_msg = str(exc_value)
date = datetime.strftime(datetime.now(), "%B %d, %Y at precisely %I:%M %p")
print(f"On {date}, a {err_type} occured in {end.filename} inside {end.name} on line {end.lineno} with the error message: {err_msg}.")
print(f"The following line of code is responsible: {end.line!r}")
print("Please make a note of it.")
def do_something_wrong():
try:
1/0
except Exception as exc:
print_custom_error_message()
if __name__ == "__main__":
do_something_wrong()
Let's run it!
user@some_machine:~$ python example.py
On August 25, 2022 at precisely 01:31 AM, a ZeroDivisionError occured in example.py inside do_something_wrong on line 21 with the error message: division by zero.
The following line of code is responsible: '1/0'
Please make a note of it.
At this point you can see how you could print this message for any place in the stack: end, beginning, anywhere in-between, or iterate through and print it for every frame in the stack.
Of course, the formatting functionality already provided by the traceback module covers most debugging use cases, but it's useful to know how to manipulate the traceback objects to extract the information you want.
