Does `try… except Exception as e` catch every possible exception?

Question

In Python 2, are all exceptions that can be raise d required to inherit from Exception?

That is, is the following sufficient to catch any possible exception:

try:
   code()
except Exception as e:
   pass

or do I need something even more general like

try:
   code()
except:
   pass

Answer 1

With the first variant you'll catch "all built-in, non-system-exiting exceptions" ( https://docs.python.org/2/library/exceptions.html ), and should catch user defined exceptions ("all user-defined exceptions should also be derived from this class").

For example, the first variant will not catch user-pressed Control-C (KeyboardInterrupt), but the second will.