In 2010, in the thread "Asynchronous exception wormholes kill modularity" [1], Bas van Dijk observed that 'unblock :: IO a -> IO a' broke modularity, as the sequence of calls 'block . block . unblock $ io' would result in 'io' being run with asynchronous exceptions unblocked, despite the outer 'block' "expecting" that asynchronous exceptions cannot be thrown. I would like to make two claims: 1. The new mask/restore interface is insufficient to "solve" this modularity problem, as *interruptible* operations can still be used to catch asynchronous exceptions. 2. Thus, we should provide an unblock combinator which can be used to catch asynchronous exceptions from a 'mask' (though not an 'uninterruptibleMask')--though it is doubtful if anyone should ever use 'mask' in the first place. Claim 1: Here is some code which reimplements 'unblock': import Control.Exception import Control.Concurrent import Control.Concurrent.MVar unblock :: IO a -> IO a unblock io = do m <- newEmptyMVar _ <- forkIO (io >>= putMVar m) takeMVar m The main idea is that 'takeMVar' is an interruptible operation: when it blocks, the thread can now receive asynchronous exceptions. In general, a thread can unmask exceptions by blocking. Here is a simple test-case: main = do let x = 10000000 -- Just do a bit of work tid <- myThreadId forkIO $ (threadDelay 10000 >> killThread tid) r <- mask $ \restore -> do -- restore $ do -- unblock $ do -- do something non-blocking evaluate (f x []) -- If the exception is delivered in a timely manner, -- shouldn't get here. print r f 0 r = r f n r = f (n-1) (n:r) With both restore and unblock commented, the ThreadKilled exception is delayed; uncommenting either restore or unblock causes the exception to be delivered. This admonition does not apply to uninterruptibleMask, for which there are no interruptible exceptions. Claim 2: Thus, I come to the conclusion that we were wrong to remove 'unblock', and that it is no worse than the ability for interruptible actions to catch asynchronous exceptions. You could very well argue that interruptible actions are a design flaw. Then you should use 'uninterruptibleMask' instead, which effectively removes the concept of interruptibility--and is thus modular. Indeed, Eyal Lotem proposed [2] that 'bracket' should instead use 'uninterruptibleMask', for precisely the reason that it is too easy to reenable asynchronous exceptions in 'mask'. But assuming that interruptible masks are a good idea (Simon Marlow has defended them as "a way avoid reasoning about asynchronous exceptions except at specific points, i.e., where you might block"), there should be an 'unblock' for this type of mask. It should be said that the absence of 'unblock' for 'uninterruptibleMask' only implies that a passed in IO action (e.g., the cleanup action in bracket) does not have access to the exceptions thrown to the current thread; it doesn't actually guarantee uninterruptibility, since the passed in IO action could always raise a normal exception. Haskell's type system is not up to the task of enforcing such invariants. Cheers, Edward [1] https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2010-March/013310.html https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2010-April/013420.html [2] https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2014-September/023675.html P.S. You were CC'ed to this mail because you participated in the original "Asynchronous exception wormholes kill modularity" discussion. P.P.S. I have some speculations about using uninterruptibleMask more frequently: it seems to me that there ought to be a variant of uninterruptibleMask that immediately raises an exception if the "uninterruptible" action blocks. This would probably of great assistance of noticing and eliminating blocking in uninterruptible code.