Mention bare except: clauses in PEP 8; see the python-dev archive around Dec. 22 2007 for a short discussion

pep-0008.txt

@@ -663,6 +663,32 @@ Programming Recommendations
       continuation characters thanks to the containing parentheses.  The older
       form will be removed in Python 3000.
 
+    - When catching exceptions, mention specific exceptions
+      whenever possible instead of using a bare 'except:' clause.
+
+      For example, use:
+
+          try:
+              import platform_specific_module
+          except ImportError:
+              platform_specific_module = None 
+
+      A bare 'except:' clause will catch SystemExit and KeyboardInterrupt
+      exceptions, making it harder to interrupt a program with Control-C,
+      and can disguise other problems.  If you want to catch all
+      exceptions that signal program errors, use 'except StandardError:'.
+
+      A good rule of thumb is to limit use of bare 'except' clauses to two 
+      cases:
+
+         1) If the exception handler will be printing out or logging
+            the traceback; at least the user will be aware that an
+            error has occurred.
+
+         2) If the code needs to do some cleanup work, but then lets
+            the exception propagate upwards with 'raise'.
+            'try...finally' is a better way to handle this case.
+
     - Use string methods instead of the string module.
 
       String methods are always much faster and share the same API with