Re: [Haskell-cafe] Taking Exception to Exceptions

[Henning Thielemann]

Immanuel Litzroth schrieb:

> Anyway, there is one more problem I have related to exceptions that is
> about forcing strictness. It relates to option parsing. I have an option -t
> that says which track from a file of tracks to print. So I go
> 
> data Flags = TrackNumber !Int deriving(Read, Show, Eq)
> 
> makeTrackNumber :: String -> Flags
> makeTrackNumber str =
> TrackNumber $ read str
> 
> options = [GetOpt.Option ['t'] ["tracknumber"] (GetOpt.ReqArg
> makeTrackNumber "tracknumber") "number of track to show"]
> 
> Now my main goes
> main = do
>   args <- getArgs
>   opts <- evaluate $ GetOpt.getOpt GetOpt.RequireOrder options args
>   print "done getting the opts"
>   case opts of ...
> 
> which of course first prints "done getting opts" and then throws an
> exception if I give it a flag
> -t abc.

'evaluate' is strange here. Is it ok to put the print after the case ?
But I have probably still not understood the problem.

Let me point to two other issues:
  An elegant way to use GetOpt is:

http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/High-level_option_handling_with_GetOpt

  I find it bad style to hide the exceptions, that can be raised. The
type of an action should reflect what exceptions are to be expected. You
can achieve this with Control.Monad.Exception.Synchronous from

http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/explicit-exception
   or Control.Monad.Error from
http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/transformers

For an application, using these techniques, see:
   http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/equal-files
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Taking Exception to Exceptions

[Max Rabkin]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Cristiano Paris  wrote:
> This avoids the possibility of having an unwanted/unknown behavior
> from the run-time stack (for example, having the web server returning
> a generic 500 Internal Server error report, filled with every sort of
> goods a cracker would be happy for).

So the information should be written to the log rather than the
browser, at least in production, but there's no reason not to catch
the exception.

> Cristiano

--Max
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Taking Exception to Exceptions

[Immanuel Litzroth]

>
>
> I recommend this paper for info, it's very easy to follow:
>
> http://www.haskell.org/~simonmar/papers/ext-exceptions.pdf
>
> Austin
>
That paper cleared up most of my issues and it is amazing that it is
not amongst the papers that are referenced at the top of the the page
describing Control.Exception.
Anyway, there is one more problem I have related to exceptions that is
about forcing strictness. It relates to option parsing. I have an option -t
that says which track from a file of tracks to print. So I go

data Flags = TrackNumber !Int deriving(Read, Show, Eq)

makeTrackNumber :: String -> Flags
makeTrackNumber str =
TrackNumber $ read str

options = [GetOpt.Option ['t'] ["tracknumber"] (GetOpt.ReqArg
makeTrackNumber "tracknumber") "number of track to show"]

Now my main goes
main = do
  args <- getArgs
  opts <- evaluate $ GetOpt.getOpt GetOpt.RequireOrder options args
  print "done getting the opts"
  case opts of ...

which of course first prints "done getting opts" and then throws an
exception if I give it a flag
-t abc. What would be the way to proceed here? Do I increase the strictness
or do I write a handler
around my complete main? Even if I map the exception in makeTrackNumber to
my very own
exception how do I find out which exact call gave a problem i.e. which is
the call stack at the moment
the exception was thrown -- I might use makeTrackNumber in other contexts
too.
Thanks in advance,
Immanuel
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Taking Exception to Exceptions

[Cristiano Paris]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 12:32 AM, Austin Seipp  wrote:
> Excerpts from Immanuel Litzroth's message of Wed Jan 07 16:53:30 -0600 2009:
> ...
>> I am little amazed that I cannot get catch, try or mapException to work
>> without telling them which exceptions I want to catch.
>> What is the rationale behind this?
>
> The rational is that it's normally not a good idea to simply gobble
> all exceptions; although the library makes it possible to do this
> anyway.

I'd advice always putting an additional generic catch-all at the top
level, at least to present the user a (possibly generic) error
message, just to stay in control.

This avoids the possibility of having an unwanted/unknown behavior
from the run-time stack (for example, having the web server returning
a generic 500 Internal Server error report, filled with every sort of
goods a cracker would be happy for).

Cristiano
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Taking Exception to Exceptions

[Austin Seipp]

Excerpts from Immanuel Litzroth's message of Wed Jan 07 16:53:30 -0600 2009:
> I'm trying to use the new (for me at least) extensible exceptions and
> I am little amazed that I cannot get catch, try or mapException to work
> without telling them which exceptions I want to catch.
> What is the rationale behind this?

The rational is that it's normally not a good idea to simply gobble
all exceptions; although the library makes it possible to do this
anyway.

You can either use the ScopedTypeVariables extension and do:

... `catch` \(e::SomeException) -> ...

Or without an extension you can do:

... `catch` handler
  where handler :: SomeException -> IO a
handler e = ...

(It's really a matter of taste if you want to use a non-haskell98
extension, although considering that the new extensible exceptions
library uses deriving data/typeable and existentials anyway, I think
ScopedTypeVariables are the way to go.)

> How does bracket manage to catch all exceptions?
> What should onException do?

onException takes an IO action and what to do if it fails - if the IO
action fails, it is caught and your 'failure action' is run, followed by
onException re-throwing the error.

> Is there some example code that uses these exceptions, or better
> documentation?

The GHC docs don't have source-code links (don't know why,) but
luckily in order to aid in using the new extensions system with older
GHCs there has been a hackage package uploaded that provides the
identical functionality:

http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/extensible-exceptions

The source is here:

http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/extensible-exceptions/0.1.1.0/doc/html/src/Control-Exception-Extensible.html

As for documentation e.g. haddock stuff, this is currently a bug as
there is none:

http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/2655

I recommend this paper for info, it's very easy to follow:

http://www.haskell.org/~simonmar/papers/ext-exceptions.pdf

Austin
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[Haskell-cafe] Taking Exception to Exceptions

[Immanuel Litzroth]

I'm trying to use the new (for me at least) extensible exceptions and
I am little amazed that I cannot get catch, try or mapException to work
without telling them which exceptions I want to catch.
What is the rationale behind this?
How does bracket manage to catch all exceptions?
What should onException do?
Is there some example code that uses these exceptions, or better
documentation?
Thanks in advance,
Immanuel
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