[Haskell-cafe] What's the best way to give up?

[David F. Place]

Hi, all.

Say I have a function solve which is a constraint solver.  It  
reconfigures its input to be a solution.  If there is no solution, it  
returns the input.

solve :: a -> Either a a
solve input output = maybe (Left input) Right $ solve' input

If there is a solution, it finds it in a few seconds.  If there is no  
solution, it goes away for days proving that.  So, I'd like to give  
up on it if it doesn't return in a few seconds.   I can think of  
several ways of doing that.  I could keep a tally of the number of  
variable assignments and give up when it reaches an impossibly huge  
number.   I could change the type to
a -> IO (Either a a ) and use getCPUTime.

Is there a standard way to do this?  Can you think of another way to  
do it?

Cheers,
David