A class for monads in which exceptions may be thrown.

Instances should obey the following law:

throwM e >> x = throwM e

In other words, throwing an exception short-circuits the rest of the monadic computation.

A class for monads which allow exceptions to be caught, in particular exceptions which were thrown by throwM.

Instances should obey the following law:

catch (throwM e) f = f e

Note that the ability to catch an exception does not guarantee that we can deal with all possible exit points from a computation. Some monads, such as continuation-based stacks, allow for more than just a success/failure strategy, and therefore catch cannot be used by those monads to properly implement a function such as finally. For more information, see MonadMask.

A class for monads which provide for the ability to account for all possible exit points from a computation, and to mask asynchronous exceptions. Continuation-based monads, and stacks such as ErrorT e IO which provide for multiple failure modes, are invalid instances of this class.

Note that this package does provide a MonadMask instance for CatchT. This instance is only valid if the base monad provides no ability to provide multiple exit. For example, IO or Either would be invalid base monads, but Reader or State would be acceptable.

Instances should ensure that, in the following code:

f `finally` g

The action g is called regardless of what occurs within f, including async exceptions.

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.