[Haskell-beginners] checking file type (without getLine)

Hi guys, When the hSetEncoding is set to utf8, getLine will attempt to read each line as belonging to a UTF-8 and when it encounters an error in the encoding it throws an exception. I wonder if there's a way of checking for errors without getLine. I didn't find any function or functions in System.IO that might do the job. is there another library that I should be looking at? Regards Matthew