If you want to ignore some exception, you probably do something like this: try: lst = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] print(lst[10]) except IndexError: pass That will work (without printing anything), but contextlib let you do the same more expressively and semantically correct: from contextlib import suppress with suppress(IndexError): lst = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] lst[10]