try except not catching the exception

Question

I was taught that an empty except catches all kinds of exceptions, but when I try this block of code it doesn't catch the exception and raise a SyntaxError. What am I doing wrong?

try:
    print "Hello"
except:
    print("Caught!")  #output: SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'. Did you mean print("Hello")?

even when I specify the kind of exception as SyntaxErrorit still doesn't catch it.

try:
    print "Hello"
except SyntaxError:
    print("Caught!") #output: SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'. Did you mean print("Hello")?

Forget about trying to catch that exception and just use `from __future__ import print_function` instead. (See also [What is \_\_future\_\_ in Python used for and how/when to use it, and how it works](//stackoverflow.com/q/7075082)) — Aran-Fey, Aug 27 '18 at 19:57
Also see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20816332/can-syntax-errors-be-handled — PM 2Ring, Aug 27 '18 at 20:29

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 27 '18 at 19:53

3

No. An empty except catches all types of runtime errors; a syntax error is not a runtime error by definition, because the code can't run at all.

answered Aug 27 '18 at 19:53

Daniel Roseman

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You got to it first! @Ayxan The code is not able to compile. – T.Woody Aug 27 '18 at 19:54
–1 syntax errors can occur at runtime. and they can be caught at runtime too. – wim Aug 27 '18 at 20:03

try except not catching the exception

1 Answers1