[Haskell] Catching error / making library functions monadic (in failure)

[Philip K.F. Hölzenspies]

Dear Hask'lers,

I'm working on a graph generator that involves a lot of random selection out 
of a list of vertices. Basically, there are functions that look a little like 
this:

select vs = randomRM (0,length vs - 1) >>= return . (vs !!)

where randomRM is a lot like Random.randomRIO, except that it is not in the IO 
monad, but rather in any monad, i.e.

class Monad m => RandomM m where
	randomM :: m a
	randomRM :: (a,a) -> m a

instance RandomM IO where
	randomM = randomIO
	randomRM = randomRIO

The problem is, obviously, that when the list of vertices (vs) is 
empty, "select vs" will result in an error. The Prelude defines (!!) as:

xs     !! n | n < 0 =  error "Prelude.!!: negative index"
[]     !! _         =  error "Prelude.!!: index too large"
(x:_)  !! 0         =  x
(_:xs) !! n         =  xs !! (n-1)

The function 'error' is implemented (at least in GHC) using 
Control.Exception.throw. Unfortunately, 'catch' does not seem to work. From 
ghci:

Prelude> catch (return $ [] !! 0) (const $ putStrLn "foo" >> return 42)
*** Exception: Prelude.(!!): index too large

Is there any way to catch errors in functions in libraries (like the Prelude)? 
This is made even more necessary by the fact that the default implementation 
for 'fail' in a monad is 'error'. I would already be happy if I could make 
all applications of error change into applications of fail, as defined in my 
monad. Preferably, though, I would not even need a failure mechanism in my 
own monad, but rather have an ErrorMonad (or something similar) and just have

class Monad m => ErrorMonad error m | m -> error where
	onError :: m a -> (error -> a) -> a

For now, I simply reimplement the functions I need that give errors.

Regards,
Philip