contextlib

The contextlib library provides utilities for common tasks involving the with statement. Currently it provides suppress, a context manager that silently ignores specified exception types.

Available Functions

Functions

suppress(*exc_types)

Returns a context manager that silently swallows any exception whose type matches one of the given types. If no types are given, all exceptions are suppressed. Non-matching exception types still propagate normally.

Parameters:

• *exc_types (type or str): Exception types to suppress (e.g. ValueError, or the equivalent type-name string). Omit to suppress all exceptions.

Returns: ContextManager: supports the with statement.

import contextlib

with contextlib.suppress(ValueError):
    int("not a number")  # silently ignored

print("continues here")

Non-matching exceptions still propagate:

import contextlib

try:
    with contextlib.suppress(ValueError):
        raise TypeError("this is not suppressed")
except TypeError as e:
    print("caught:", e)

Suppress everything by omitting the types:

import contextlib

with contextlib.suppress():
    raise Exception("also ignored")

from ... import works as expected:

from contextlib import suppress

with suppress(ValueError):
    raise ValueError("ignored")

When no exception occurs, the body runs normally:

import contextlib

result = 0
with contextlib.suppress(ValueError):
    result = 42

print(result)  # 42

See Also

• functools: higher-order functions like reduce() and partial().
• itertools: iteration and combinatorics utilities.