Why is “except: pass” a bad programming practice?

Question

I often see comments on other Stack Overflow questions about how the use of except: pass is discouraged. Why is this bad? Sometimes I just don't care what the errors, are and I want to just continue with the code.

try:
    something
except:
    pass

Why is using an except: pass block bad? What makes it bad? Is it the fact that I pass on an error or that I except any error?

Answer 1

Executing your pseudo code literally does not even give any error:

try:
    something
except:
    pass

as if it is a perfectly valid piece of code, instead of throwing a NameError. I hope this is not what you want.

Answer 2

In my opinion errors have a reason to appear, that my sound stupid, but thats the way it is. Good programming only raises errors when you have to handle them. Also, as i read some time ago, "the pass-Statement is a Statement that Shows code will be inserted later", so if you want to have an empty except-statement feel free to do so, but for a good program there will be a part missing. because you dont handle the things you should have. Appearing exceptions give you the chance to correct input data or to change your data structure so these exceptions dont occur again (but in most cases (Network-exceptions, General input-exceptions) exceptions indicate that the next parts of the program wont execute well. For example a NetworkException can indicate a broken network-connection and the program cant send/recieve data in the next program steps.

But using a pass block for only one execption-block is valid, because you still differenciate beetween the types of exceptions, so if you put all exception-blocks in one, it is not empty:

try:
    #code here
except Error1:
    #exception handle1

except Error2:
    #exception handle2
#and so on

can be rewritten that way:

try:
    #code here
except BaseException as e:
    if isinstance(e, Error1):
        #exception handle1

    elif isinstance(e, Error2):
        #exception handle2

    ...

    else:
        raise

So even multiple except-blocks with pass-statements can result in code, whose structure handles special types of exceptions.

Answer 3

The main problem here is that it ignores all and any error: Out of memory, CPU is burning, user wants to stop, program wants to exit, Jabberwocky is killing users.

This is way too much. In your head, you're thinking "I want to ignore this network error". If something unexpected goes wrong, then your code silently continues and breaks in completely unpredictable ways that no one can debug.

That's why you should limit yourself to ignoring specifically only some errors and let the rest pass.

Answer 4

First, it violates two principles of Zen of Python:

• Explicit is better than implicit
• Errors should never pass silently

What it means, is that you intentionally make your error pass silently. Moreover, you don't event know, which error exactly occurred, because except: pass will catch any exception.

Second, if we try to abstract away from the Zen of Python, and speak in term of just sanity, you should know, that using except:pass leaves you with no knowledge and control in your system. The rule of thumb is to raise an exception, if error happens, and take appropriate actions. If you don't know in advance, what actions these should be, at least log the error somewhere (and better re-raise the exception):

try:
    something
except:
    logger.exception('Something happened')

But, usually, if you try to catch any exception, you are probably doing something wrong!

Answer 5

So, what output does this code produce?

fruits = [ 'apple', 'pear', 'carrot', 'banana' ]

found = False
try:
     for i in range(len(fruit)):
         if fruits[i] == 'apple':
             found = true
except:
     pass

if found:
    print "Found an apple"
else:
    print "No apples in list"

Now imagine the try-except block is hundreds of lines of calls to a complex object hierarchy, and is itself called in the middle of large program's call tree. When the program goes wrong, where do you start looking?

Answer 6

Simply put, if an exception or error is thrown, something's wrong. It may not be something very wrong, but creating, throwing, and catching errors and exceptions just for the sake of using goto statements is not a good idea, and it's rarely done. 99% of the time, there was a problem somewhere.

Problems need to be dealt with. Just like how it is in life, in programming, if you just leave problems alone and try to ignore them, they don't just go away on their own a lot of times; instead they get bigger and multiply. To prevent a problem from growing on you and striking again further down the road, you either 1) eliminate it and clean up the mess afterwards, or 2) contain it and clean up the mess afterwards.

Just ignoring exceptions and errors and leaving them be like that is a good way to experience memory leaks, outstanding database connections, needless locks on file permissions, etc.

On rare occasions, the problem is so miniscule, trivial, and - aside from needing a try...catch block - self-contained, that there really is just no mess to be cleaned up afterwards. These are the only occasions when this best practice doesn't necessarily apply. In my experience, this has generally meant that whatever the code is doing is basically petty and forgoable, and something like retry attempts or special messages are worth neither the complexity nor holding the thread up on.

At my company, the rule is to almost always do something in a catch block, and if you don't do anything, then you must always place a comment with a very good reason why not. You must never pass or leave an empty catch block when there is anything to be done.