
``warnings`` --- Warning control
********************************

Warning messages are typically issued in situations where it is useful
to alert the user of some condition in a program, where that condition
(normally) doesn't warrant raising an exception and terminating the
program.  For example, one might want to issue a warning when a
program uses an obsolete module.

Python programmers issue warnings by calling the ``warn()`` function
defined in this module.  (C programmers use ``PyErr_WarnEx``; see
*Exception Handling* for details).

Warning messages are normally written to ``sys.stderr``, but their
disposition can be changed flexibly, from ignoring all warnings to
turning them into exceptions.  The disposition of warnings can vary
based on the warning category (see below), the text of the warning
message, and the source location where it is issued.  Repetitions of a
particular warning for the same source location are typically
suppressed.

There are two stages in warning control: first, each time a warning is
issued, a determination is made whether a message should be issued or
not; next, if a message is to be issued, it is formatted and printed
using a user-settable hook.

The determination whether to issue a warning message is controlled by
the warning filter, which is a sequence of matching rules and actions.
Rules can be added to the filter by calling ``filterwarnings()`` and
reset to its default state by calling ``resetwarnings()``.

The printing of warning messages is done by calling ``showwarning()``,
which may be overridden; the default implementation of this function
formats the message by calling ``formatwarning()``, which is also
available for use by custom implementations.


Warning Categories
==================

There are a number of built-in exceptions that represent warning
categories. This categorization is useful to be able to filter out
groups of warnings.  The following warnings category classes are
currently defined:

+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| Class                              | Description                                     |
+====================================+=================================================+
| ``Warning``                        | This is the base class of all warning category  |
|                                    | classes.  It is a subclass of ``Exception``.    |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| ``UserWarning``                    | The default category for ``warn()``.            |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| ``DeprecationWarning``             | Base category for warnings about deprecated     |
|                                    | features.                                       |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| ``SyntaxWarning``                  | Base category for warnings about dubious        |
|                                    | syntactic features.                             |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| ``RuntimeWarning``                 | Base category for warnings about dubious        |
|                                    | runtime features.                               |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| ``FutureWarning``                  | Base category for warnings about constructs     |
|                                    | that will change semantically in the future.    |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| ``PendingDeprecationWarning``      | Base category for warnings about features that  |
|                                    | will be deprecated in the future (ignored by    |
|                                    | default).                                       |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| ``ImportWarning``                  | Base category for warnings triggered during the |
|                                    | process of importing a module (ignored by       |
|                                    | default).                                       |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| ``UnicodeWarning``                 | Base category for warnings related to Unicode.  |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| ``BytesWarning``                   | Base category for warnings related to ``bytes`` |
|                                    | and ``buffer``.                                 |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+

While these are technically built-in exceptions, they are documented
here, because conceptually they belong to the warnings mechanism.

User code can define additional warning categories by subclassing one
of the standard warning categories.  A warning category must always be
a subclass of the ``Warning`` class.


The Warnings Filter
===================

The warnings filter controls whether warnings are ignored, displayed,
or turned into errors (raising an exception).

Conceptually, the warnings filter maintains an ordered list of filter
specifications; any specific warning is matched against each filter
specification in the list in turn until a match is found; the match
determines the disposition of the match.  Each entry is a tuple of the
form (*action*, *message*, *category*, *module*, *lineno*), where:

* *action* is one of the following strings:

  +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
  | Value           | Disposition                                    |
  +=================+================================================+
  | ``"error"``     | turn matching warnings into exceptions         |
  +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
  | ``"ignore"``    | never print matching warnings                  |
  +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
  | ``"always"``    | always print matching warnings                 |
  +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
  | ``"default"``   | print the first occurrence of matching         |
  |                 | warnings for each location where the warning   |
  |                 | is issued                                      |
  +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
  | ``"module"``    | print the first occurrence of matching         |
  |                 | warnings for each module where the warning is  |
  |                 | issued                                         |
  +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
  | ``"once"``      | print only the first occurrence of matching    |
  |                 | warnings, regardless of location               |
  +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+

* *message* is a string containing a regular expression that the
  warning message must match (the match is compiled to always be
  case-insensitive)

* *category* is a class (a subclass of ``Warning``) of which the
  warning category must be a subclass in order to match

* *module* is a string containing a regular expression that the module
  name must match (the match is compiled to be case-sensitive)

* *lineno* is an integer that the line number where the warning
  occurred must match, or ``0`` to match all line numbers

Since the ``Warning`` class is derived from the built-in ``Exception``
class, to turn a warning into an error we simply raise
``category(message)``.

The warnings filter is initialized by *-W* options passed to the
Python interpreter command line.  The interpreter saves the arguments
for all *-W* options without interpretation in ``sys.warnoptions``;
the ``warnings`` module parses these when it is first imported
(invalid options are ignored, after printing a message to
``sys.stderr``).

The warnings that are ignored by default may be enabled by passing
*-Wd* to the interpreter. This enables default handling for all
warnings, including those that are normally ignored by default. This
is particular useful for enabling ImportWarning when debugging
problems importing a developed package. ImportWarning can also be
enabled explicitly in Python code using:

   warnings.simplefilter('default', ImportWarning)


Temporarily Suppressing Warnings
================================

If you are using code that you know will raise a warning, such as a
deprecated function, but do not want to see the warning, then it is
possible to suppress the warning using the ``catch_warnings`` context
manager:

   import warnings

   def fxn():
       warnings.warn("deprecated", DeprecationWarning)

   with warnings.catch_warnings():
       warnings.simplefilter("ignore")
       fxn()

While within the context manager all warnings will simply be ignored.
This allows you to use known-deprecated code without having to see the
warning while not suppressing the warning for other code that might
not be aware of its use of deprecated code.


Testing Warnings
================

To test warnings raised by code, use the ``catch_warnings`` context
manager. With it you can temporarily mutate the warnings filter to
facilitate your testing. For instance, do the following to capture all
raised warnings to check:

   import warnings

   def fxn():
       warnings.warn("deprecated", DeprecationWarning)

   with warnings.catch_warnings(record=True) as w:
       # Cause all warnings to always be triggered.
       warnings.simplefilter("always")
       # Trigger a warning.
       fxn()
       # Verify some things
       assert len(w) == 1
       assert isinstance(w[-1].category, DeprecationWarning)
       assert "deprecated" in str(w[-1].message)

One can also cause all warnings to be exceptions by using ``error``
instead of ``always``. One thing to be aware of is that if a warning
has already been raised because of a ``once``/``default`` rule, then
no matter what filters are set the warning will not be seen again
unless the warnings registry related to the warning has been cleared.

Once the context manager exits, the warnings filter is restored to its
state when the context was entered. This prevents tests from changing
the warnings filter in unexpected ways between tests and leading to
indeterminate test results. The ``showwarning()`` function in the
module is also restored to its original value.

When testing multiple operations that raise the same kind of warning,
it is important to test them in a manner that confirms each operation
is raising a new warning (e.g. set warnings to be raised as exceptions
and check the operations raise exceptions, check that the length of
the warning list continues to increase after each operation, or else
delete the previous entries from the warnings list before each new
operation).


Available Functions
===================

warnings.warn(message[, category[, stacklevel]])

   Issue a warning, or maybe ignore it or raise an exception.  The
   *category* argument, if given, must be a warning category class
   (see above); it defaults to ``UserWarning``.  Alternatively
   *message* can be a ``Warning`` instance, in which case *category*
   will be ignored and ``message.__class__`` will be used. In this
   case the message text will be ``str(message)``. This function
   raises an exception if the particular warning issued is changed
   into an error by the warnings filter see above.  The *stacklevel*
   argument can be used by wrapper functions written in Python, like
   this:

      def deprecation(message):
          warnings.warn(message, DeprecationWarning, stacklevel=2)

   This makes the warning refer to ``deprecation()``'s caller, rather
   than to the source of ``deprecation()`` itself (since the latter
   would defeat the purpose of the warning message).

warnings.warn_explicit(message, category, filename, lineno[, module[, registry[, module_globals]]])

   This is a low-level interface to the functionality of ``warn()``,
   passing in explicitly the message, category, filename and line
   number, and optionally the module name and the registry (which
   should be the ``__warningregistry__`` dictionary of the module).
   The module name defaults to the filename with ``.py`` stripped; if
   no registry is passed, the warning is never suppressed. *message*
   must be a string and *category* a subclass of ``Warning`` or
   *message* may be a ``Warning`` instance, in which case *category*
   will be ignored.

   *module_globals*, if supplied, should be the global namespace in
   use by the code for which the warning is issued.  (This argument is
   used to support displaying source for modules found in zipfiles or
   other non-filesystem import sources).

warnings.showwarning(message, category, filename, lineno[, file[, line]])

   Write a warning to a file.  The default implementation calls
   ``formatwarning(message, category, filename, lineno, line)`` and
   writes the resulting string to *file*, which defaults to
   ``sys.stderr``.  You may replace this function with an alternative
   implementation by assigning to ``warnings.showwarning``. *line* is
   a line of source code to be included in the warning message; if
   *line* is not supplied, ``showwarning()`` will try to read the line
   specified by *filename* and *lineno*.

warnings.formatwarning(message, category, filename, lineno[, line])

   Format a warning the standard way.  This returns a string  which
   may contain embedded newlines and ends in a newline.  *line* is a
   line of source code to be included in the warning message; if
   *line* is not supplied, ``formatwarning()`` will try to read the
   line specified by *filename* and *lineno*.

warnings.filterwarnings(action[, message[, category[, module[, lineno[, append]]]]])

   Insert an entry into the list of warnings filters.  The entry is
   inserted at the front by default; if *append* is true, it is
   inserted at the end. This checks the types of the arguments,
   compiles the message and module regular expressions, and inserts
   them as a tuple in the  list of warnings filters.  Entries closer
   to the front of the list override entries later in the list, if
   both match a particular warning.  Omitted arguments default to a
   value that matches everything.

warnings.simplefilter(action[, category[, lineno[, append]]])

   Insert a simple entry into the list of warnings filters. The
   meaning of the function parameters is as for ``filterwarnings()``,
   but regular expressions are not needed as the filter inserted
   always matches any message in any module as long as the category
   and line number match.

warnings.resetwarnings()

   Reset the warnings filter.  This discards the effect of all
   previous calls to ``filterwarnings()``, including that of the *-W*
   command line options and calls to ``simplefilter()``.


Available Context Managers
==========================

class class warnings.catch_warnings([*, record=False, module=None])

   A context manager that copies and, upon exit, restores the warnings
   filter and the ``showwarning()`` function. If the *record* argument
   is ``False`` (the default) the context manager returns ``None`` on
   entry. If *record* is ``True``, a list is returned that is
   progressively populated with objects as seen by a custom
   ``showwarning()`` function (which also suppresses output to
   ``sys.stdout``). Each object in the list has attributes with the
   same names as the arguments to ``showwarning()``.

   The *module* argument takes a module that will be used instead of
   the module returned when you import ``warnings`` whose filter will
   be protected. This argument exists primarily for testing the
   ``warnings`` module itself.
