Provide error messages for Python exceptions, even if the original message is empty

errortext

errortext is a Python package to provide error messages for Python exceptions, even if the original message is empty.

As example consider the following function that might fail in different ways:

from errortext import error_text

def do_something(action_to_perform):
    if action_to_perform == "walk":
        print("walking")
    elif action_to_perform == "sleep":
        raise ValueError("must be tired in order to sleep")
    elif action_to_perform == "run":
        raise NotImplementedError("run")
    else:
        assert False

One could use the following code to run this function and print possible error details by using the error message of the exception from str(error):

try:
    do_something(action)
    print(f"Success: done with {action}")
except Exception as error:
    print(f"Error: cannot {action}: {str(error)}")

As you notice, some error will not have any meaningful message:

do_something("sleep") -> cannot sleep: must be tired in order to sleep
do_something("run")   -> cannot run: run
do_something("xxx")   -> cannot xxx:

No change the error handler to:

print(f"Error with error_text: cannot {action}: {error_text(error)}")

The error messages will at least contain some hint at what went wrong:

do_something("sleep") -> cannot sleep: must be tired in order to sleep
do_something("run")   -> cannot run: NotImplementedError: run
do_something("xxx")   -> cannot xxx: AssertionError