[Haskell-cafe] Brackets and Asynchronous Exceptions

[Andrew Gallagher]

Great. Thanks!  This is exactly what I was looking for.  Apparently this 
issue is also described in the paper Asynchronous Exception in Haskell.

Thanks,
Andrew

On Wed, 15 Apr 2009, Jason Dagit wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Andrew Gallagher <ajcg at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> In a program I am writing, I have many locations where I acquire a resource,
>> perform an operation with it, then release it.  I have been using the
>> 'bracket' function so that the "release" operation would be performed even
>> if the operation threw an exception.  This seems to work nicely.
>>
>> In the event of an asynchronous exception, however, is there a possible
>> scenario where a release is not performed after an acquire?
>>
>> Looking at the example given in bracket documentation:
>>
>> bracket
>>   (openFile "filename" ReadMode)
>>   (hClose)
>>   (\fileHandle -> do { ... })
>>
>> Is it possbile that an asynchronous exception could be raised in this thread
>> after openFile executes but *before* the appropriate handlers are installed
>> and the operation is run, preventing hClose from executing?
>>
>> If 'bracket' does not handle this case, should I be using the block/unblock
>> functions to disable asynchronous exceptions:
>>
>> block
>>   (bracket
>>      (openFile "filename" ReadMode)
>>      (hClose)
>>      (\fileHandle -> do
>>         unblock
>>         ({ ... })))
>
> Does this answer your question?
> http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/src/Control-Exception-Base.html#bracket
>
> If so, I found it by going to haskell.org/hoogle searching for bracket
> and then following the haddock "Source" to the definition.
>
> I hope that helps!
> Jason
>