["python","multithreading","exception"]
Catch a thread's exception in the caller thread?

I'm very new to Python and multithreaded programming in general. Basically, I have a script that will copy files to another location. I would like this to be placed in another thread so I can output .... to indicate that the script is still running. The problem that I am having is that if the files cannot be copied it will throw an exception. This is OK if running in the main thread; however, having the following code does not work: try: threadClass = TheThread(param1, param2, etc.) threadClass.start() ##### **Exception takes place here** except: print "Caught an exception" In the thread class itself, I tried to re-throw the exception, but it does not work. I have seen people on here ask similar questions, but they all seem to be doing something more specific than what I am trying to do (and I don't quite understand the solutions offered). I have seen people mention the usage of sys.exc_info(), however I do not know where or how to use it. Edit: The code for the thread class is below: class TheThread(threading.Thread): def __init__(self, sourceFolder, destFolder): threading.Thread.__init__(self) self.sourceFolder = sourceFolder self.destFolder = destFolder def run(self): try: shul.copytree(self.sourceFolder, self.destFolder) except: raise
The problem is that thread_obj.start() returns immediately. The child thread that you spawned executes in its own context, with its own stack. Any exception that occurs there is in the context of the child thread, and it is in its own stack. One way I can think of right now to communicate this information to the parent thread is by using some sort of message passing, so you might look into that. Try this on for size: import sys import threading import queue class ExcThread(threading.Thread): def __init__(self, bucket): threading.Thread.__init__(self) self.bucket = bucket def run(self): try: raise Exception('An error occured here.') except Exception: self.bucket.put(sys.exc_info()) def main(): bucket = queue.Queue() thread_obj = ExcThread(bucket) thread_obj.start() while True: try: exc = bucket.get(block=False) except queue.Empty: pass else: exc_type, exc_obj, exc_trace = exc # deal with the exception print exc_type, exc_obj print exc_trace thread_obj.join(0.1) if thread_obj.isAlive(): continue else: break if __name__ == '__main__': main()