py3: conditionalize the raise statement raise E,V,T is not acceptable in Python 3, thats is conditionalized. Moreover this will result in syntax error so we have to use exec() to execute this. Related PEP- https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3109/#id14 My implementation is motivated from the six implementation except they are defining a new function exec_() to prevent adding an extra frame AFAIK :) https://bitbucket.org/gutworth/six/src/ca4580a5a648/six.py#six.py-680