diff --git a/Lib/sgmllib.py b/Lib/sgmllib.py
index 3ab57c2..1574f44 100644
--- a/Lib/sgmllib.py
+++ b/Lib/sgmllib.py
@@ -530,7 +530,7 @@
     else:
         try:
             f = open(file, 'r')
-        except IOError, msg:
+        except IOError as msg:
             print file, ":", msg
             sys.exit(1)