Yeah, it all seems a bit hacky. Especially the bit where a caught exception bound to a variable is cleared at the end of the `except` clause. I'm pretty sure it

Yeah, it all seems a bit hacky. Especially the bit where a caught exception bound to a variable is cleared at the end of the `except` clause. I'm pretty sure it's because if you didn't you'd get a reference cycle (exception object -> stack trace -> function invocation record -> function locals -> exception object), which makes CPython's GC sad.