Documentation

Any type that you wish to throw or catch as an exception must be an instance of the Exception class. The simplest case is a new exception type directly below the root:

 data MyException = ThisException | ThatException deriving (Show, Typeable) instance Exception MyException 

The default method definitions in the Exception class do what we need in this case. You can now throw and catch ThisException and ThatException as exceptions:

 *Main> throw ThisException `catch` \e -> putStrLn ("Caught " ++ show (e :: MyException)) Caught ThisException 

In more complicated examples, you may wish to define a whole hierarchy of exceptions:

 --------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Make the root exception type for all the exceptions in a compiler data SomeCompilerException = forall e . Exception e => SomeCompilerException e deriving Typeable instance Show SomeCompilerException where show (SomeCompilerException e) = show e instance Exception SomeCompilerException compilerExceptionToException :: Exception e => e -> SomeException compilerExceptionToException = toException . SomeCompilerException compilerExceptionFromException :: Exception e => SomeException -> Maybe e compilerExceptionFromException x = do SomeCompilerException a <- fromException x cast a --------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Make a subhierarchy for exceptions in the frontend of the compiler data SomeFrontendException = forall e . Exception e => SomeFrontendException e deriving Typeable instance Show SomeFrontendException where show (SomeFrontendException e) = show e instance Exception SomeFrontendException where toException = compilerExceptionToException fromException = compilerExceptionFromException frontendExceptionToException :: Exception e => e -> SomeException frontendExceptionToException = toException . SomeFrontendException frontendExceptionFromException :: Exception e => SomeException -> Maybe e frontendExceptionFromException x = do SomeFrontendException a <- fromException x cast a --------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Make an exception type for a particular frontend compiler exception data MismatchedParentheses = MismatchedParentheses deriving (Typeable, Show) instance Exception MismatchedParentheses where toException = frontendExceptionToException fromException = frontendExceptionFromException 

We can now catch a MismatchedParentheses exception as MismatchedParentheses, SomeFrontendException or SomeCompilerException, but not other types, e.g. IOException:

 *Main> throw MismatchedParentheses catch e -> putStrLn ("Caught " ++ show (e :: MismatchedParentheses)) Caught MismatchedParentheses *Main> throw MismatchedParentheses catch e -> putStrLn ("Caught " ++ show (e :: SomeFrontendException)) Caught MismatchedParentheses *Main> throw MismatchedParentheses catch e -> putStrLn ("Caught " ++ show (e :: SomeCompilerException)) Caught MismatchedParentheses *Main> throw MismatchedParentheses catch e -> putStrLn ("Caught " ++ show (e :: IOException)) *** Exception: MismatchedParentheses 

The SomeException type is the root of the exception type hierarchy. When an exception of type e is thrown, behind the scenes it is encapsulated in a SomeException.