Error messages in EAFP style

"It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission", or EAFP, is a common style in Python, where the coder writes code expecting an error and uses the error handling for expected flow control. The problem I often find is that this can lead to confusing error messages. Consider this example. some_dict = {} # oops a bug, this should have 'expected key' try: some_dict['optional key'] # expected error except KeyError: some_dict['expected key'] # unexpected error Which yields: Traceback (most recent call last): File "eafp.py", line 4, in <module> some_dict['optional key'] # expected error KeyError: 'optional key' During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred: Traceback (most recent call last): File "eafp.py", line 6, in <module> some_dict['expected key'] # unexpected error KeyError: 'expected key' Specifically, the unexpected error message references the expected one. This is a trivial example, but in some situations the first error may be completely expected and un-noteworthy, but seems closely related to the real cause of the error and can cause some confusion. My question is how best to handle this type of issue. Can the first error message be suppressed? Or modified to something less conspicuous?