-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello, I'm trying to make generic helper functions for database querying. I would like to be able to define functions that work for every monad that holds a database connection and is built on top of the IO monad. For this, I have defined the following type class:

class MonadIO m => ConnectedM m where getConnection :: m Connection

The 'query' function from the database library I am using returns a Statement which has to be closed under all circumstances (especially when an exception is thrown); I am using bracket to ensure this, in the following helper function:

withQuery :: ConnectedM m => (Statement -> m a) -> String -> m a withQuery f q = do conn <- getConnection bracket (liftIO $ query conn q) (\ s -> liftIO $ closeStatement s) f

However, the definition of bracket relies on block and unblock, which have the following types:

bracket :: IO a -> (a -> IO b) -> (a -> IO c) -> IO c block :: IO a -> IO a unblock :: IO a -> IO a

This forces f to be an IO action in the above withQuery function. If bracket, block, and unblock had these types, my helper function would be well typed:

bracket :: MonadIO m => m a -> (a -> m b) -> (a -> m c) -> m c block :: MonadIO m => m a -> m a unblock :: MonadIO m => m a -> m a

Would anything prevent block, unblock, bracket (and other similar functions working on IO actions) from being generalized to all intances of MonadIO? Lunar. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE/VJ11d1rcjNWgdWQRAqeGAJ9tUgXPkOwAfyWj6wTHEGNQ9UYnGgCfSn9S Tf9lH2Tq5pMZVhTM/WVO1/o= =fPqV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----