What is a good way to handle exceptions when trying to read a file in python?

How about this:

try:
    f = open(fname, 'rb')
except OSError:
    print "Could not open/read file:", fname
    sys.exit()

with f:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    for row in reader:
        pass #do stuff here

Here is a read/write example. The with statements insure the close() statement will be called by the file object regardless of whether an exception is thrown. http://effbot.org/zone/python-with-statement.htm

import sys

fIn = 'symbolsIn.csv'
fOut = 'symbolsOut.csv'

try:
   with open(fIn, 'r') as f:
      file_content = f.read()
      print "read file " + fIn
   if not file_content:
      print "no data in file " + fIn
      file_content = "name,phone,address\n"
   with open(fOut, 'w') as dest:
      dest.write(file_content)
      print "wrote file " + fOut
except IOError as e:
   print "I/O error({0}): {1}".format(e.errno, e.strerror)
except: #handle other exceptions such as attribute errors
   print "Unexpected error:", sys.exc_info()[0]
print "done"