Exceptions that arise from using this library fall into four categories:

• Unable to parse provided Dot code.
• Dot code is not valid UTF-8.
• An error when trying to run an external program (e.g. dot).
• Treating a non-custom Attribute as a custom one.

This function maps one exception into another as proposed in the paper "A semantics for imprecise exceptions".

Throw an exception. Exceptions may be thrown from purely functional code, but may only be caught within the IO monad.

A variant of throw that can only be used within the IO monad.

Although throwIO has a type that is an instance of the type of throw, the two functions are subtly different:

throw e   `seq` x  ===> throw e
throwIO e `seq` x  ===> x

The first example will cause the exception e to be raised, whereas the second one won't. In fact, throwIO will only cause an exception to be raised when it is used within the IO monad. The throwIO variant should be used in preference to throw to raise an exception within the IO monad because it guarantees ordering with respect to other IO operations, whereas throw does not.

A version of catch with the arguments swapped around; useful in situations where the code for the handler is shorter. For example:

  do handle (\NonTermination -> exitWith (ExitFailure 1)) $
     ...

When you want to acquire a resource, do some work with it, and then release the resource, it is a good idea to use bracket, because bracket will install the necessary exception handler to release the resource in the event that an exception is raised during the computation. If an exception is raised, then bracket will re-raise the exception (after performing the release).

A common example is opening a file:

bracket
  (openFile "filename" ReadMode)
  (hClose)
  (\fileHandle -> do { ... })

The arguments to bracket are in this order so that we can partially apply it, e.g.:

withFile name mode = bracket (openFile name mode) hClose