Documentation

Throwing exceptions, and resource handling in the presence of exceptions.

Does not include the ability to respond to exceptions.

Catching exceptions.

Covers standard utilities to respond to exceptions.

Support for safely working in the presence of asynchronous exceptions.

This is typically not needed directly as the utilities in MonadThrow and MonadCatch cover most use cases.

Monads which can evaluate.

Describes the behaviour of a thread when an asynchronous exception is received.

Any type that you wish to throw or catch as an exception must be an instance of the Exception class. The simplest case is a new exception type directly below the root:

data MyException = ThisException | ThatException
    deriving Show

instance Exception MyException

The default method definitions in the Exception class do what we need in this case. You can now throw and catch ThisException and ThatException as exceptions:

*Main> throw ThisException `catch` \e -> putStrLn ("Caught " ++ show (e :: MyException))
Caught ThisException

In more complicated examples, you may wish to define a whole hierarchy of exceptions:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Make the root exception type for all the exceptions in a compiler

data SomeCompilerException = forall e . Exception e => SomeCompilerException e

instance Show SomeCompilerException where
    show (SomeCompilerException e) = show e

instance Exception SomeCompilerException

compilerExceptionToException :: Exception e => e -> SomeException
compilerExceptionToException = toException . SomeCompilerException

compilerExceptionFromException :: Exception e => SomeException -> Maybe e
compilerExceptionFromException x = do
    SomeCompilerException a <- fromException x
    cast a

---------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Make a subhierarchy for exceptions in the frontend of the compiler

data SomeFrontendException = forall e . Exception e => SomeFrontendException e

instance Show SomeFrontendException where
    show (SomeFrontendException e) = show e

instance Exception SomeFrontendException where
    toException = compilerExceptionToException
    fromException = compilerExceptionFromException

frontendExceptionToException :: Exception e => e -> SomeException
frontendExceptionToException = toException . SomeFrontendException

frontendExceptionFromException :: Exception e => SomeException -> Maybe e
frontendExceptionFromException x = do
    SomeFrontendException a <- fromException x
    cast a

---------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Make an exception type for a particular frontend compiler exception

data MismatchedParentheses = MismatchedParentheses
    deriving Show

instance Exception MismatchedParentheses where
    toException   = frontendExceptionToException
    fromException = frontendExceptionFromException

We can now catch a MismatchedParentheses exception as MismatchedParentheses, SomeFrontendException or SomeCompilerException, but not other types, e.g. IOException:

*Main> throw MismatchedParentheses `catch` \e -> putStrLn ("Caught " ++ show (e :: MismatchedParentheses))
Caught MismatchedParentheses
*Main> throw MismatchedParentheses `catch` \e -> putStrLn ("Caught " ++ show (e :: SomeFrontendException))
Caught MismatchedParentheses
*Main> throw MismatchedParentheses `catch` \e -> putStrLn ("Caught " ++ show (e :: SomeCompilerException))
Caught MismatchedParentheses
*Main> throw MismatchedParentheses `catch` \e -> putStrLn ("Caught " ++ show (e :: IOException))
*** Exception: MismatchedParentheses

The SomeException type is the root of the exception type hierarchy. When an exception of type e is thrown, behind the scenes it is encapsulated in a SomeException.

Used in generalBracket

See exceptions package for discussion and motivation.

The default handler type for catches, whcih is a generalisation of Handler.

Like catches but for MonadCatch rather than only IO.