[Haskell] Better Exception Handling

[Bayley, Alistair]

> From: John Goerzen [mailto:jgoerzen at complete.org] 
>
> My other choice is to use Dynamic for my
> exceptions, but that makes it even more 
> difficult to catch and handle


Here's how I create "custom" exceptions; it doesn't seem onerous to me, but
then I have a high tolerance for some kinds of coding pain:

> data SqliteException = SqliteException Int String
>   deriving (Typeable)

> catchSqlite :: IO a -> (SqliteException -> IO a) -> IO a
> catchSqlite = catchDyn

> throwSqlite :: SqliteException -> a
> throwSqlite = throwDyn


> Python can work that way, but also adds another feature:
> 
> try:
>     blah
>     moreblah
> finally:
>     foo

And in Haskell we have catch(Dyn), bracket, and finally. Are these not
enough?


> Haskell's exception catching doesn't really have less 
> functionality than OCaml (some might argue it has more),
> but it takes a lot more effort to compose, needing
> to provide a function that returns a function in many cases.

Does it? I'm not convinced... I think it's no more verbose than any other
exception-handling mechanism, but maybe there's some cognitive overhead in
translating an OO exception-handling idiom into Haskell. All I've ever used
is catch and bracket, and I find them fairly straightforward. Could you post
some code which you think would be clearer with an Ocaml or Python exception
handling style?


> The other annoying thing is forcing it to run in the IO monad. 

Note that you can throw exceptions from anywhere. They just have to be
*caught* in the IO monad.

Alistair.

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