Proposal: System.Environment.getEnv should return Maybe

[John Lato]

> Currently there is no one planning to use MaybeT in System.Environment,
> since this would mean to make base/haskell2010 depend on transformers. But
> an option might be to start a package where generally IO exceptions are
> replaced by MaybeT and its friends. Then we could leave System.Environment
> as it is.

But people don't want to leave System.Environment as it is.  That was
the point of the proposal, which does have widespread support (IIRC
nobody spoke in defense of the current behavior).

And as you point out, using MaybeT in System.Environment is currently
a non-starter, which makes IO (Maybe String) the obvious type choice
regardless of use case.  The proposal didn't go through the entire
chain of reasoning there, but I would expect it's obvious to everyone
involved in the discussion.

In my support of the proposal, I tossed in a (probably ill-advised)
comment expressing my dislike of implicit exceptions in general, which
I have to say I now regret.  I certainly don't want this proposal,
which has universal support, to become bogged down in a discussion
about implicit exceptions in general.  Especially since the general
discussion seems to have little to add to the specifics of this
particular proposal.

With apologies,
John L.