A class for monads in which exceptions may be thrown.

Like mask, but does not pass a restore action to the argument.

Like uninterruptibleMask, but does not pass a restore action to the argument.

Catches all exceptions, and somewhat defeats the purpose of the extensible exception system. Use sparingly.

Catch all IOError (eqv. IOException) exceptions. Still somewhat too general, but better than using catchAll. See catchIf for an easy way of catching specific IOErrors based on the predicates in System.IO.Error.

A more generalized way of determining which exceptions to catch at run time.

Catch exceptions only if they pass some predicate. Often useful with the predicates for testing IOError values in System.IO.Error.

Generalized version of Handler

Catches different sorts of exceptions. See Control.Exception's catches

Flipped catch. See Control.Exception's handle.

Flipped catchAll

Flipped catchIOError

Flipped catchJust. See Control.Exception's handleJust.

Flipped catchIf

Similar to catch, but returns an Either result. See Control.Exception's try.

A variant of try that takes an exception predicate to select which exceptions are caught. See Control.Exception's tryJust

Run an action only if an exception is thrown in the main action. The exception is not caught, simply rethrown.

Generalized abstracted pattern of safe resource acquisition and release in the face of exceptions. The first action "acquires" some value, which is "released" by the second action at the end. The third action "uses" the value and its result is the result of the bracket.

If an exception occurs during the use, the release still happens before the exception is rethrown.

Version of bracket without any value being passed to the second and third actions.

Perform an action with a finalizer action that is run, even if an exception occurs.

Like bracket, but only performs the final action if there was an exception raised by the in-between computation.

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, Typeable)

 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
     deriving Typeable

 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
     deriving Typeable

 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 (Typeable, 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.