How do I determine what type of exception occurred?

You usually should not catch all possible exceptions with try: ... except as this is overly broad. Just catch those that are expected to happen for whatever reason. If you really must, for example if you want to find out more about some problem while debugging, you should do

try:
    ...
except Exception as ex:
    print ex # do whatever you want for debugging.
    raise    # re-raise exception.

The actual exception can be captured in the following way:

try:
    i = 1/0
except Exception as e:
    print e

You can learn more about exceptions from The Python Tutorial.

Get the name of the class that exception object belongs:

e.__class__.__name__

and using print_exc() function will also print stack trace which is essential info for any error message.

Like this:

from traceback import print_exc

class CustomException(Exception): pass

try:
    raise CustomException("hi")
except Exception as e:
    print ('type is:', e.__class__.__name__)
    print_exc()
    # print("exception happened!")

You will get output like this:

type is: CustomException
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "exc.py", line 7, in <module>
    raise CustomException("hi")
CustomException: hi

And after print and analysis, the code can decide not to handle exception and just execute raise:

from traceback import print_exc

class CustomException(Exception): pass

def calculate():
    raise CustomException("hi")

try:
    calculate()
except CustomException as e:
    # here do some extra steps in case of CustomException
    print('custom logic doing cleanup and more')
    # then re raise same exception
    raise

Output:

custom logic doing cleanup and more

And interpreter prints exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 9, in <module>
    calculate()
  File "test.py", line 6, in calculate
    raise CustomException("hi")
__main__.CustomException: hi

After raise original exception continues to propagate further up the call stack. (Beware of possible pitfall) If you raise new exception it caries new (shorter) stack trace.

from traceback import print_exc

class CustomException(Exception):
    def __init__(self, ok):
        self.ok = ok

def calculate():
    raise CustomException(False)

try:
    calculate()
except CustomException as e:
    if not e.ok:
        # Always use `raise` to rethrow exception
        # following is usually mistake, but here we want to stress this point
        raise CustomException(e.ok)
    print("handling exception")

Output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 13, in <module>
    raise CustomException(e.message)
__main__.CustomException: hi    

Notice how traceback does not include calculate() function from line 9 which is the origin of original exception e.

Just refrain from catching the exception and the traceback that Python prints will tell you what exception occurred.

Unless somefunction is a very bad coded legacy function, you shouldn’t need what you’re asking.

Use multiple except clause to handle in different ways different exceptions:

try:
    someFunction()
except ValueError:
    # do something
except ZeroDivision:
    # do something else

The main point is that you shouldn’t catch generic exception, but only the ones that you need to. I’m sure that you don’t want to shadow unexpected errors or bugs.

In Python 2, the following are useful

except Exception, exc:

    # This is how you get the type
    excType = exc.__class__.__name__

    # Here we are printing out information about the Exception
    print 'exception type', excType
    print 'exception msg', str(exc)

    # It's easy to reraise an exception with more information added to it
    msg = 'there was a problem with someFunction'
    raise Exception(msg + 'because of %s: %s' % (excType, exc))

To add to Lauritz’s answer, I created a decorator/wrapper for exception handling and the wrapper logs which type of exception occurred.

class general_function_handler(object):
    def __init__(self, func):
        self.func = func
    def __get__(self, obj, type=None):
        return self.__class__(self.func.__get__(obj, type))
    def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        try:
            retval = self.func(*args, **kwargs)
        except Exception, e :
            logging.warning('Exception in %s' % self.func)
            template = "An exception of type {0} occured. Arguments:n{1!r}"
            message = template.format(type(e).__name__, e.args)
            logging.exception(message)
            sys.exit(1) # exit on all exceptions for now
        return retval

This can be called on a class method or a standalone function with the decorator:

@general_function_handler

See my blog about for the full example: http://ryaneirwin.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/python-decorators-and-exception-handling/

Your question is: “How can I see exactly what happened in the someFunction() that caused the exception to happen?”

It seems to me that you are not asking about how to handle unforeseen exceptions in production code (as many answers assumed), but how to find out what is causing a particular exception during development.

The easiest way is to use a debugger that can stop where the uncaught exception occurs, preferably not exiting, so that you can inspect the variables. For example, PyDev in the Eclipse open source IDE can do that. To enable that in Eclipse, open the Debug perspective, select Manage Python Exception Breakpoints in the Run menu, and check Suspend on uncaught exceptions.

You can start as Lauritz recommended, with:

except Exception as ex:

and then just to print ex like so:

try:
    #your try code here
except Exception as ex:
    print ex

Here’s how I’m handling my exceptions. The idea is to do try solving the issue if that’s easy, and later add a more desirable solution if possible. Don’t solve the issue in the code that generates the exception, or that code loses track of the original algorithm, which should be written to-the-point. However, pass what data is needed to solve the issue, and return a lambda just in case you can’t solve the problem outside of the code that generates it.

path = 'app.p'

def load():
    if os.path.exists(path):
        try:
            with open(path, 'rb') as file:
                data = file.read()
                inst = pickle.load(data)
        except Exception as e:
            inst = solve(e, 'load app data', easy=lambda: App(), path=path)()
    else:
        inst = App()
    inst.loadWidgets()

# e.g. A solver could search for app data if desc='load app data'
def solve(e, during, easy, **kwargs):
    class_name = e.__class__.__name__
    print(class_name + ': ' + str(e))
    print('t during: ' + during)
    return easy

For now, since I don’t want to think tangentially to my app’s purpose, I haven’t added any complicated solutions. But in the future, when I know more about possible solutions (since the app is designed more), I could add in a dictionary of solutions indexed by during.

In the example shown, one solution might be to look for app data stored somewhere else, say if the ‘app.p’ file got deleted by mistake.

For now, since writing the exception handler is not a smart idea (we don’t know the best ways to solve it yet, because the app design will evolve), we simply return the easy fix which is to act like we’re running the app for the first time (in this case).

Most answers point to except (…) as (…): syntax (rightly so) but at the same time nobody wants to talk about an elephant in the room, where the elephant is sys.exc_info() function.
From the documentation of sys module (emphasis mine):

This function returns a tuple of three values that give information
about the exception that is currently being handled.
(…)
If no exception is being handled anywhere on the stack, a tuple
containing three None values is returned. Otherwise, the values
returned are (type, value, traceback). Their meaning is: type gets the
type of the exception being handled (a subclass of BaseException);
value gets the exception instance (an instance of the exception type);
traceback gets a traceback object (see the Reference Manual) which
encapsulates the call stack at the point where the exception
originally occurred.

I think the sys.exc_info() could be treated as the most direct answer to the original question of How do I know what type of exception occurred?

These answers are fine for debugging, but for programmatically testing the exception, isinstance(e, SomeException) can be handy, as it tests for subclasses of SomeException too, so you can create functionality that applies to hierarchies of exceptions.

Use the below for both Exception type and Exception text

import sys
print(str(sys.exc_info()[0]).split(' ')[1].strip('>').strip("'")+"-"+(str(sys.exc_info()[1])))

if you want only exception type: Use –>

import sys
print(str(sys.exc_info()[0]).split(' ')[1].strip('>').strip("'"))

Thanks Rajeshwar

Hope this will help a little more

import sys
varExcepHandling, varExcepHandlingZer = 2, 0
try:
  print(varExcepHandling/varExcepHandlingZer)
except Exception as ex: 
  print(sys.exc_info())

‘sys.exc_info()‘ will return a tuple, if you only want the exception class name use ‘sys.exc_info()[0]‘

Note:- if you want to see all the exception classes just write dir(__builtin__)

Use type class and as statement

try:#code
except Exception as e:
     m=type(e)
     #m is the class of the exception
     strm=str(m)
     #strm is the string of m

I found this solution, may be it will help you:

try:
  t
except Exception as e:
  print(type(e))

Output:

<class 'NameError'>