[Haskell-cafe] Re: Coming up with a better API for Network.Socket.recv

[Colin Paul Adams]

> Anyway, the POSIX spec indicates the EOF condition as return -1 with errno
> == ECONNRESET; this should not be taken as anything but the limited
> expressiveness of a C-based API.  We should map this return to Nothing.

Johan> I'm not sure I agree. I think using exceptions in this case is fine as
Johan> loosing the connection is indeed an exceptional condition and the best
Johan> thing a program can do in this case is probably to abort processing of
Johan> the disconnected client.

I guess this depends upon how exceptional you want an exception to be.

To my mind, a lost connection is a fairly normal condition (FAR to
normal for my teleworking situation :-( ). That is, I would expect
the exception to occur rather than not, during one run of a
program. On that basis, I would suggest Nothing is better than an
exception.

But I guess it depends upon the program. For long running servers,
my expectation above is surely true. But other "servers" might not
share the same expectation.
Perhaps it should be configurable?

-- 
Colin Adams
Preston Lancashire