[Haskell-cafe] Re: Asynchronous exception wormholes kill modularity

[Isaac Dupree]

On 03/25/10 12:36, Simon Marlow wrote:
> I'd also be amenable to having block/unblock count nesting levels
> instead, I don't think it would be too hard to implement and it wouldn't
> require any changes at the library level.

Wasn't there a reason that it didn't nest?

I think it was that operations that block-as-in-takeMVar, for an 
unbounded length of time, are always supposed to C.Exception.unblock and 
in fact be unblocked within that operation.  Otherwise the thread might 
never receive its asynchronous exceptions.

Thus, if within a C.Exception.block, you call an IO that might block, 
such as takeMVar, modifyMVar_, or an arbitrary "IO x" argument to your 
function, then you must take care to handle its exceptions (for example, 
in the case of modifyMVar_'s implementation, to rollback the MVar to its 
previous value).

-Isaac