The function is deprecated because it is equivalent to str(ex) in Python 3. Note that %s implies conversion by str so we don't have to even call str for most of cases. However a few explicit str calls are kept to simplify unit tests. Depends-on: https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/oslo.utils/+/938929 Change-Id: Ie04bf64a22781c95d24222c96eee7865b0712312 Signed-off-by: Takashi Kajinami <kajinamit@oss.nttdata.com>