Using exceptions in imperative code

Bayley, Alistair Alistair_Bayley@ldn.invesco.com
Tue, 29 Jul 2003 14:06:12 +0100


I've got resource acquisition (and release) code which looks like this at
present:

> connect = do
>   envHandle <- envCreate
>   errHandle <- handleAlloc oci_HTYPE_ERROR envHandle
>   serverHandle <- handleAlloc oci_HTYPE_SERVER envHandle
>   connection <- dbLogon "user" "password" "database" envHandle errHandle
>   session <- getSession errHandle connection
>   return (envHandle, errHandle, serverHandle, connection, session)

> disconnect envHandle errHandle serverHandle connection session = do
>   sessionEnd errHandle connection session
>   serverDetach errHandle serverHandle
>   handleFree oci_HTYPE_SERVER serverHandle
>   handleFree oci_HTYPE_ERROR errHandle
>   handleFree oci_HTYPE_ENV envHandle
>   terminate


How should I structure it to handle exceptions raised by the various
functions (envCreate, handleAlloc, dbLogon, etc)? I've started to
restructure it like this:

getEnv = do
  catchDyn ( do
    envHandle <- envCreate
    getErr envHandle
  ) (putStrLn "envCreate failed")

getErr envHandle = do
  catchDyn ( do
    errHandle <- handleAlloc oci_HTYPE_ERROR envHandle
    getServer envHandle errHandle
  ) (do
    reportOCIException envHandle
    handleFree oci_HTYPE_ENV envHandle
  )

getServer envHandle errHandle = do
  catchDyn ( do
    serverHandle <- handleAlloc oci_HTYPE_SERVER envHandle
    getServer envHandle
  ) (do
    reportOCIException envHandle
    handleFree oci_HTYPE_ERROR errHandle
    handleFree oci_HTYPE_ENV envHandle
  )
...

but this is so awkward. How should I structure it?


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