I don't think it is a bug, but I am a bit puzzled as to why that doesn't work. A bonus question is why does it mention variable e? There is no variable e.
Prelude> :m +Control.Exception
Prelude Control.Exception> handle (\_-> return "err") undefined
<interactive>:1:0:
Ambiguous type variable `e' in the constraint:
`Exception e'
arising from a use of `handle' at <interactive>:1:0-35
Probable fix: add a type signature that fixes these type variable(s)
Prelude Control.Exception>
Apparently it works fine in ghci 6.8, I am using 6.10.1.
Edit: I have minimized the code. I expect that to have the same result in both 6.8 and 6.10
class C a
foo :: C a => (a -> Int)-> Int
foo _ = 1
arg :: C a => a -> Int
arg _ = 2
bar :: Int
bar = foo arg
trying to compile it:
[1 of 1] Compiling Main ( /tmp/foo.hs, interpreted )
/tmp/foo.hs:12:10:
Ambiguous type variable `a' in the constraint:
`C a' arising from a use of `arg' at /tmp/foo.hs:12:10-12
Probable fix: add a type signature that fixes these type variable(s)
Failed, modules loaded: none.
Prelude Control.Exception>
The type of Control.Exception.handle is:
handle :: Exception e => (e -> IO a) -> IO a -> IO a
The problem you are seeing is that the lambda expression (\_ -> return "err") is not of type e -> IO a where e is an instance of Exception. Clear as mud? Good. Now I'll provide a solution which should actually be useful :)
It just so happens in your case that e should be Control.Exception.ErrorCall since undefined uses error which throws ErrorCall (an instance of Exception).
To handle uses of undefined you can define something like handleError:
handleError :: (ErrorCall -> IO a) -> IO a -> IO a
handleError = handle
It's essentially an alias Control.Exception.handle with e fixed as ErrorCall which is what error throws.
It looks like this when run in GHCi 7.4.1:
ghci> handleError (\_ -> return "err") undefined
"err"
To handle all exceptions a handleAll function can be written as follows:
handleAll :: (SomeException -> IO a) -> IO a -> IO a
handleAll = handle
Catching all exceptions has consequences described well in this excerpt of the Control.Exception documentation:
Catching all exceptions
It is possible to catch all exceptions, by using the type SomeException:
catch f (\e -> ... (e :: SomeException) ...)
HOWEVER, this is normally not what you want to do!
For example, suppose you want to read a file, but if it doesn't exist then continue as if it contained "". You might be tempted to just catch all exceptions and return "" in the handler. However, this has all sorts of undesirable consequences. For example, if the user presses control-C at just the right moment then the UserInterrupt exception will be caught, and the program will continue running under the belief that the file contains "". Similarly, if another thread tries to kill the thread reading the file then the ThreadKilled exception will be ignored.
Instead, you should only catch exactly the exceptions that you really want. In this case, this would likely be more specific than even "any IO exception"; a permissions error would likely also want to be handled differently. Instead, you would probably want something like:
e <- tryJust (guard . isDoesNotExistError) (readFile f)
let str = either (const "") id e
There are occassions when you really do need to catch any sort of exception. However, in most cases this is just so you can do some cleaning up; you aren't actually interested in the exception itself. For example, if you open a file then you want to close it again, whether processing the file executes normally or throws an exception. However, in these cases you can use functions like bracket, finally and onException, which never actually pass you the exception, but just call the cleanup functions at the appropriate points.
But sometimes you really do need to catch any exception, and actually see what the exception is. One example is at the very top-level of a program, you may wish to catch any exception, print it to a logfile or the screen, and then exit gracefully. For these cases, you can use catch (or one of the other exception-catching functions) with the SomeException type.
Source: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/Control-Exception.html#g:4
This problem shows up only in GHC 6.10; it can't be duplicated in GHC 6.8 because the type of handle is different:
: nr#homedog 620 ; ghci
GHCi, version 6.8.2: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ :? for help
Loading package base ... linking ... done.
Prelude> :m +Control.Exception
Prelude Control.Exception> handle (\_ -> return "err") undefined
"err"
Prelude Control.Exception>
OK maybe I can get this right at last. I think the problem is not the monomorphism restriction, but rather you've hit an instance of the Read/Show problem: you're offering to handle some type of exception, in the new version of `handle, there is more than one type of exception, and the type of that exception does not appear in your result. So the compiler has no way of knowing which type of exception you're trying to handle. One way to work this is to pick one. Here's some code that works:
Prelude Control.Exception> let alwaysError :: SomeException -> IO String; alwaysError = \_ -> return "err"
Prelude Control.Exception> handle alwaysError undefined
"err"
Incidentally, the example use of handle in the GHC library documentation does not compile under 6.10. I have filed a bug report.
A workaround is to use Control.OldException in ghc 6.10.* instead of Control.Exception.
Try giving your handler the type SomeException -> IO x, where x is a concrete type, e.g.
import Control.Exception
let f _ = putStrLn "error" :: SomeException -> IO ()
in handle f undefined
"Exception e" is likely from the type signature of "handle".
The documentation
says:
handle :: Exception e => (e -> IO a) -> IO a -> IO a
In GHC 6.8 it used to be different, which would explain why I don't get that error.
handle :: (Exception -> IO a) -> IO a -> IO a
Seems you're running into the monomorphism restriction. That "_"-Pattern must be monomorphic (which it is with ghc 6.8) or explicitly typed. A "workaround" is to put the pattern on the left hand side of a definition, where it constitutes a "simple pattern binding" as specified by the Haskell Report.
Try this:
let f _ = return "err"
handle f undefined
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Monomorphism_restriction
Related
In The acquire-use-release cycle section from Real World Haskell, the type of bracket is shown:
ghci> :type bracket
bracket :: IO a -> (a -> IO b) -> (a -> IO c) -> IO c
Now, from the description of bracket, I understand that an exception might be thrown while the function of type a -> IO c is running. With reference to the book, this exception is caught by the calling function, via handle:
getFileSize path = handle (\_ -> return Nothing) $
bracket (openFile path ReadMode) hClose $ \h -> do
size <- hFileSize h
return (Just size)
I can't help but thinking that when the exception does occur from within bracket's 3rd argument, bracket is not returning an IO c.
How does this go well with purity?
I think the answer might be exactly this, but I'm not sure.
I can't help but thinking that when the exception does occur from within bracket's 3rd argument, bracket is not returning an IO c.
Prelude> fail "gotcha" :: IO Bool
*** Exception: user error (gotcha)
As you note, no Bool (respectively, c) value is produced. That's ok, because the action does not conclude – instead it re-raises the exception. That exception might then either crash the program, or it might be caught again somewhere else in calling code – importantly, whoever catches it will a) not get the result value (“the c”), you never do that in case of an exception; b) doesn't need to worry about closing the file handle, because that has already been done by bracket.
My question: is there any "try with" equivalent in Haskell? Something like this :
try
{
head l
}
with
Failure _ -> []
If the operation in try failed we pattern match the error and do appropriate job in with section?
You should really be avoiding such errors via total functions. Then, if a function can return an error, have its return type be an Either e a where e is the type of the exception and a is the otherwise successful type. If you don't need to pass any information about the exception, you can just return Maybe a.
That said, Control.Exception has some facilities for catching errors via try or catch, at the cost of only being able to do such handling in the IO monad. At GHCi you can see this:
ghci> import Control.Exception
ghci> catch (head []) (\msg -> putStrLn $ "caught: " ++ show (msg :: SomeException))
caught: Prelude.head: empty list
You can use functions and total functions to achieve the same thing most of the time. For your example:
fromMaybe [] (listToMaybe l)
In this simple case, you could just use foldr:
foldr const [] l
Or even use pattern matching directly:
case l of
[] -> []
x : _ -> x
More generally, using Maybe or Either, as others have suggested, can make for more modular code. You may want to check out the MaybeT and ExceptT types, and the MonadError class, to integrate failure into monadic computations.
I am playing with exceptions in haskell and stumbled upon one thing I can't understand yet.
In GHCi I do:
Prelude Control.Exception> let thrower = (read "A") :: Int
Prelude Control.Exception> :{
Prelude Control.Exception| let main = do
Prelude Control.Exception| x <- (try $ return thrower) :: IO (Either SomeException Int)
Prelude Control.Exception| print x
Prelude Control.Exception| :}
Prelude Control.Exception> main
This defines thrower, my test expression that will fail with exception.
Then I define main that wraps that expression into try (wrapping it into IO first, since try accepts IO) and then unwraps it from IO (produced by try) and prints it.
Everything looks great so far - evaluating main in repl gives back exception wrapped into Either:
Right *** Exception: Prelude.read: no parse
However, if I try to compile and execute same code as an app:
module Main where
import Control.Exception
thrower = (read "A") :: Int
main = do
x <- (try $ return thrower) :: IO (Either SomeException Int)
print x
... it gets crashed with exception:
haskelltest.exe: Prelude.read: no parse
It seems like exception slipped past try.
What am I missing here and what is the correct way to handle this?
Well, basically (as Sebastian Redl pointed out earlier) this is a strictness issue. return thrower does not in any way evaluate thrower, so try succeeds. Only when the content of the Either SomeException Int is printed, namely Right thrower, does read actually try to parse "A", and fails... but at this point, the try is already over.
The way to prevent this is to inject the parse result strictly into the IO monad, with
main = do
x <- try $ evaluate thrower :: IO (Either SomeException Int)
print x
Why the try fails with your code in GHCi I don't know; I daresay it shouldn't. Aha: as Reid noted, it doesn't fail actually!
Arguably, this is an example for why exceptions should generally be avoided in Haskell. Use a suitable monad transformer to make it explicit what errors might occur, and to get reliable evaluation of the error-checking.
Part of what you're missing is that when you ran your code in ghci, try also did not catch the error raised by read "A" :: Int. Weren't you expecting a Left <something> result? See leftaroundabout's answer for why that is.
The difference between ghci and ghc here is probably due to output buffering: output to stdout (like "Right " here) is unbuffered in ghci, but line buffered by default in a compiled program.
I have a function
import System.Exit
exit_and_report_type_mismatch :: String -> IO ExitCode
exit_and_report_type_mismatch error_message = do
putStrLn error_message
exitFailure
and a section of another like so
interpret_expr :: Vars -> Expr -> Val
interpret_expr vars (Plus (ConsE _ _) (NumE _)) = exit_and_report_type_mismatch "Type Error: Can only concatenate list (not int) to list"
Haskell complains to me that it is expecting type Val (another data type I have defined) but it actually receives type IO Exitcode. Fair enough - exit_and_report_mismatch is returning IO ExitCode which is not a Val.
How do I completely abort the Haskell program from within "exit_and_report_type_mismatch"? I have read a bit about Haskell exceptions but the explanations either do not make sense or mention having to call ExitWith from the main function, which is not an option.
This is what error is for. From the documentation:
error :: [Char] -> a
error stops execution and displays an error message.
For instance:
zsh% runhaskell <<<'main = putStrLn (error "Message") >> print "Not reached."'
runghcXXXX7729.hs: Message
The effect of putStrLn is ignored, and the program terminates as soon as the value produced by error is demanded (lazy evaluation means that just putting error somewhere doesn't immediately cause an error; as you might or might not expect, let x = error "Message" in putStrLn "Printed" causes no errors). It is possible to catch these exceptions with the functions from Control.Exception.Base, such as catch, but I've never done this nor have I seen this done.
Also, as a final note, consider avoiding the use of error. Partial functions (functions that aren't defined over their entire input domain) are best avoided when possible, as it's much easier to reason about your code with the stronger guarantees total functions provide. It's nice when, as for total functions, f :: A -> B really means "the function f returns something of type B"; for partial functions, f :: A -> B means only "if the function f returns, then what it returns is of type B". In your case, this might mean having a type like interpretExpr :: Vars -> Expr -> Either RuntimeError Val, or something suitably isomorphic (in the simplest case, perhaps data Result = Error String | Value Val, and interpretExpr :: Vars -> Expr -> Result).
This will do it:
import System.IO.Unsafe
exit_and_report_type_mismatch :: String -> a
exit_and_report_type_mismatch error_message = unsafePerformIO $ do
putStrLn error_message
exitFailure
The function error might work the same though.
I've got a function:
unify :: [Constraint] -> [Substitution]
and in certain cases it throws exceptions with the error function:
error "Circular constraint"
I'm using Test.HUnit for unit testing and I'd like to make a test case that asserts these errors are thrown on certain inputs. I found this, which provides a way of testing for exceptions that are instances of Eq, but error seems to give an ErrorCall exception, which is not an instance of Eq, so I get the error:
No instance for (Eq ErrorCall)
arising from a use of `assertException'
How can I write a TestCase that asserts that error was called and (preferably) checks the message?
Ideally I'd refactor your function into
unify' :: [Constraint] -> Maybe [Substitution]
unify' = -- your original function, but return Nothing instead of calling error,
-- and return Just x when your original function would return x
unify = fromMaybe (error "Circular constraint") . unify'
I would then test unify' instead of testing unify.
If there was more than one possible error message, I would refactor it like this instead:
unify' :: [Constraint] -> Either String [Substitution]
-- and return Left foo instead of calling error foo
unify = either error id . unify'
(Incidentally, if this is for a library other programmers will be using, some of them would prefer to call unify' instead of the partial function unify.)
If you can't refactor your code, I'd modify the code you link to, replacing assertException with:
assertErrorCall :: String -> IO a -> IO ()
assertErrorCall desiredErrorMessage action
= handleJust isWanted (const $ return ()) $ do
action
assertFailure $ "Expected exception: " ++ desiredErrorMessage
where isWanted (ErrorCall actualErrorMessage)
= guard $ actualErrorMessage == desiredErrorMessage