[Haskell-beginners] Ambiguous type variable

[Jonathon Delgado]

I'm trying to use
  catch (...) (\e -> putStrLn $ show e)
However, I get an error
  Ambiguous type variable ‘a0’ arising from a use of ‘show’ prevents the constraint ‘(Show a0)’ from being solved.
This goes away if I change the code to
  catch (...) (\e -> putStrLn $ show (e::IOException))

A couple of things I don't understand here:
- The signature for catch begins "Exception e", and exception it "class (Typeable e, Show e) => Exception e". So why isn't show automatically available?
- Why does the new code work at all? e is Exception, not IOException. What would happen if it caught a different Exception?