sys.exc_info()[1] - different handling from str() and unicode() - py 2.6

[vbr]

BPO	5274
Nosy	@birkenfeld
Superseder	bpo-6108: unicode(exception) and str(exception) should return the same message on Py2.6

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2009-05-29.07:37:10.267>
created_at = <Date 2009-02-15.21:50:35.637>
labels = ['type-bug', 'expert-unicode']
title = 'sys.exc_info()[1] - different handling from str() and unicode() - py 2.6'
updated_at = <Date 2009-05-29.07:37:10.208>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/vbr'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2009-05-29.07:37:10.208>
actor = 'georg.brandl'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2009-05-29.07:37:10.267>
closer = 'georg.brandl'
components = ['Unicode']
creation = <Date 2009-02-15.21:50:35.637>
creator = 'vbr'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 5274
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['82172', '86031', '88500']
nosy_count = 2.0
nosy_names = ['georg.brandl', 'vbr']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'duplicate'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = '6108'
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue5274'
versions = ['Python 2.6']

[vbr]

Recently I noticed a bit surprising behaviour of sys.exc_info() in
python 2.6.1 (comparing to 2.5.4).
Some code like:
try:
my_text = unicode(open("test_file.txt").read(), "utf-8")

triggers UnicodeDecodeError while opening a text file wrongly with
utf-8 codec (test_file.txt contains the string "abšcd" encoded in
windows-1250);

this error is catched by the except clause.
Further the mentioned versions of python differ in handling sys.exc_info
()
The following lines:
print sys.exc_info()[1]
print repr(sys.exc_info()[1])
print str(sys.exc_info()[1])
print unicode(sys.exc_info()[1])

result in python 2.5 in:

'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x9a in position 2: unexpected code byte
UnicodeDecodeError('utf8', 'ab\x9acd', 2, 3, 'unexpected code byte')
'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x9a in position 2: unexpected code byte
'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x9a in position 2: unexpected code byte

in python 2.6 it is:
'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x9a in position 2: unexpected code byte
UnicodeDecodeError('utf8', 'ab\x9acd', 2, 3, 'unexpected code byte')
'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x9a in position 2: unexpected code byte
('utf8', 'ab\x9acd', 2, 3, 'unexpected code byte')

Which is kind of confusing, I'd expect str() and unicode() to return
the equivalent content, which is not the case here.
(The second part "ab\x9acd" is the whole content of the file being
read - which is normally quite a bit longer than this sample...)

Regards
vbr

[vbr]

I just want to confirm, that the reported issue is the same in python
2.6.2,
is it really the intended behaviour in python 2.6 (as opposed to 2.5)?

vbr

[birkenfeld]

Duplicate of bpo-6108.