Summary

There are 7 instances of bare except: clauses throughout the codebase that catch ALL exceptions including KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit. This is a Python anti-pattern that prevents proper program termination and can hide critical errors.

Impact

Severity: Medium
Type: Code Quality / Reliability

Bare except: clauses can:

• Prevent users from gracefully terminating the program with Ctrl+C (KeyboardInterrupt)
• Hide system exit signals (SystemExit)
• Mask unexpected errors that should propagate
• Make debugging significantly harder

Affected Files

1. pdd/fix_errors_from_unit_tests.py:88, 95

   • Silently ignores errors when cleaning up temporary files

   try:
       os.unlink(tmp_path)
   except:  # BAD: Catches KeyboardInterrupt, SystemExit, etc.
       pass

2. pdd/construct_paths.py:266

   • Hides git repository detection failures

   try:
       import git
       repo = git.Repo(file_path, search_parent_directories=True)
       repo_root = repo.working_tree_dir
   except:  # BAD: Should catch specific git exceptions
       repo_root = os.getcwd()

3. pdd/update_main.py:65

   • Swallows git errors without logging

   try:
       import git
       repo = git.Repo(code_dir, search_parent_directories=True)
       repo_root = repo.working_tree_dir
   except:  # BAD: No logging of actual error
       pass

4. pdd/unfinished_prompt.py:108

   • Hides print/rprint errors

   try:
       rprint(f"Input text: {prompt_text}")
   except:  # BAD: If rprint fails, should know why
       print(f"Input text: {prompt_text}")

5. pdd/setup_tool.py:293

   • Swallows shell detection errors

   try:
       shell_path = os.getenv('SHELL', '/bin/bash')
       shell_name = os.path.basename(shell_path)
       return shell_name
   except:  # BAD: os.path.basename shouldn't fail on valid input
       return 'bash'

6. pdd/agentic_common.py:549

   • Hides JSON parsing errors

   try:
       data = json.loads(lines[-1])
   except:  # BAD: Should be json.JSONDecodeError
       pass

Recommended Fix

Replace all bare except: clauses with specific exception types:

# Instead of:
try:
    os.unlink(tmp_path)
except:
    pass

# Use:
try:
    os.unlink(tmp_path)
except (OSError, FileNotFoundError):
    pass  # File already deleted or doesn't exist

# Or for cleanup:
try:
    os.unlink(tmp_path)
except Exception as e:
    # Still allows KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit to propagate
    pass

References

• PEP 8 - Programming Recommendations: "Bare except: clauses will catch SystemExit and KeyboardInterrupt exceptions"
• Python Best Practices

Steps to Reproduce

1. Run any PDD command that triggers these code paths
2. Press Ctrl+C during execution
3. Observe that some cleanup handlers may prevent graceful termination

Additional Context

While most of these are in cleanup/fallback code where the impact is lower, it's still best practice to catch specific exceptions. This makes the code more maintainable and helps identify unexpected error conditions during development.