[Haskell-cafe] Extensible Exceptions

[Thomas Schilling]

It's a pattern match error, implemented by throwing an asynchronous
exception.  The idea being, that we only have one mechanism (well, an
synchronous exceptions, thrown via throwIO).

Yes, I know that there's a difference between "error" and "exception",
but I would argue that which is which depends on the program.  For
example, for most programs a pattern match error is a fatal condition,
there's no sane recovery from it.  OTOH, in a program like GHCi, a
pattern match error in an executed statement is an exceptional
condition, which we want to catch, so it doesn't kill GHCi.

2008/11/22 Henning Thielemann <lemming at henning-thielemann.de>:
>
> On Sat, 22 Nov 2008, Thomas Schilling wrote:
>
>> Be careful, though.  This only works if there's a single constructor
>> for your exception type. If there are multiple, you should write it
>> like this:
>>
>>  thing_to_try `catch` \(e :: MyErrorType) -> case e of MyError1 _ ->
>> ..; MyError2 _ -> ...
>>
>> If you write `catch` (MyError1 ...) and a MyError2 is thrown, you will
>> get a pattern match error exception.
>
> A "pattern match exception" or "pattern match error"? I mean, not handling a
> certain pattern is a programming error not an exceptional condition at
> runtime. Thus there is no need to throw a "pattern match exception" which is
> catched and handled somewhere else.
>
>



-- 
Push the envelope.  Watch it bend.