bpo-45464: [doc] Explain that subclassing multiple exceptions is fragile (GH-29094)

Co-authored-by: Pablo Galindo Salgado <Pablogsal@gmail.com>
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Łukasz Langa 2021-10-20 18:54:31 +02:00 committed by GitHub
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@ -34,6 +34,10 @@ class or one of its subclasses, and not from :exc:`BaseException`. More
information on defining exceptions is available in the Python Tutorial under
:ref:`tut-userexceptions`.
Exception context
-----------------
When raising (or re-raising) an exception in an :keyword:`except` or
:keyword:`finally` clause
:attr:`__context__` is automatically set to the last exception caught; if the
@ -67,6 +71,25 @@ exceptions so that the final line of the traceback always shows the last
exception that was raised.
Inheriting from built-in exceptions
-----------------------------------
User code can create subclasses that inherit from an exception type.
It's recommended to only subclass one exception type at a time to avoid
any possible conflicts between how the bases handle the ``args``
attribute, as well as due to possible memory layout incompatibilities.
.. impl-detail::
Most built-in exceptions are implemented in C for efficiency, see:
:source:`Objects/exceptions.c`. Some have custom memory layouts
which makes it impossible to create a subclass that inherits from
multiple exception types. The memory layout of a type is an implementation
detail and might change between Python versions, leading to new
conflicts in the future. Therefore, it's recommended to avoid
subclassing multiple exception types altogether.
Base classes
------------

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@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
Mention in the documentation of :ref:`Built-in Exceptions
<bltin-exceptions>` that inheriting from multiple exception types in a
single subclass is not recommended due to possible memory layout
incompatibility.