Issue #15767: Introduce ModuleNotFoundError, a subclass of

ImportError.

The exception is raised by import when a module could not be found.
Technically this is defined as no viable loader could be found for the
specified module. This includes ``from ... import`` statements so that
the module usage is consistent for all situations where import
couldn't find what was requested.

This should allow for the common idiom of::

  try:
    import something
  except ImportError:
    pass

to be updated to using ModuleNotFoundError and not accidentally mask
ImportError messages that should propagate (e.g. issues with a
loader).

This work was driven by the fact that the ``from ... import``
statement needed to be able to tell the difference between an
ImportError that simply couldn't find a module (and thus silence the
exception so that ceval can raise it) and an ImportError that
represented an actual problem.

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/c-api/exceptions.rst b/Doc/c-api/exceptions.rst
index c0c30a0..1bdcdd3 100644
--- a/Doc/c-api/exceptions.rst
+++ b/Doc/c-api/exceptions.rst
@@ -686,6 +686,8 @@ the variables:
 +-----------------------------------------+---------------------------------+----------+
 | :c:data:`PyExc_ImportError`             | :exc:`ImportError`              |          |
 +-----------------------------------------+---------------------------------+----------+
+| :c:data:`PyExc_ModuleNotFoundError`     | :exc:`ModuleNotFoundError`      |          |
++-----------------------------------------+---------------------------------+----------+
 | :c:data:`PyExc_IndexError`              | :exc:`IndexError`               |          |
 +-----------------------------------------+---------------------------------+----------+
 | :c:data:`PyExc_InterruptedError`        | :exc:`InterruptedError`         |          |