[Haskell-cafe] Exceptions during exception unwinding

[Brian Bloniarz]

I had a question about onException & friends: what's the rationale
for having:
(error "foo") `onException` (error "bar")

give bar and not foo? I.e. why does an exception raised during
exception handling get propagated past the exception that triggered
the handler?

Most examples I can think for exception unwinding code would prefer the
original exception be propagated -- for example, HDBC has a function which
rolls back a DB transaction on exception; it implements it like so:
> withTransaction conn func =
>   do r <- onException (func conn) doRollback
>      commit conn
>      return r
>   where doRollback = 
>             -- Discard any exception from (rollback conn) so original
>             -- exception can be re-raised
>             Control.Exception.catch (rollback conn) doRollbackHandler
>         doRollbackHandler :: SomeException -> IO ()
>         doRollbackHandler _ = return ()
IMHO, it'd be easier to just write:
> withTransaction conn func =
>   do r <- onException (func conn) (rollback conn)
>      commit conn
>      return r

This same argument applies to bracket, bracket_, bracketOnError & finally;
even the common:
> bracket openSomeHandle closeSomeHandle doAction
If some error arises during doAction, there's a chance closeSomeHandle might fail
(even a good chance, given that exception unwinding paths are usually poorly
tested), and probably doAction has more accurate information about what went
wrong than closeSomeHandle.

This is just a thought; I hadn't seen this discussed somewhere. I know for
example that Java has the same approach as the current Control.Exception, so
there must be good arguments for that too. One that I can think of: using
onException to rethrow an exception as a different type, though that's what
mapException is for, correct?

Thanks,
-Brian 		 	   		  
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