Is this really a solution? Currently, getContents reports no errors but does perfect error recovery: the result of the computation prior to the error is preserved and reported to the caller. Imprecise exceptions give us error reporting -- but no error recovery. All previously computed results are lost. Here's a typical scenario: do l <- getContents return (map process l) If an error occurs reading lazy input, we'd like to log the error and assume the input is terminated with EOF.
i was wondering: could you perhaps use the old Hood Observe trick to help you out? Hood wraps lazy sources in unsafePerformIO handlers that log things as they are demanded, then passes them on. you might be able to use the same to pass things on as they are demanded, while logging exceptions and replacing exceptional with repaired or default values?
attached is an implementation sketch, with an example problem (a lazily produced String that never gets its 10th element, and includes an error for every uppercase Char in the input. with the handlers commented out, we get things like this: $ (echo "Hi "; sleep 1; echo "There, World") | runHaskell ResumeCatch.hs ---------- *** Exception: oops while replacing str with a handled str (in the definition of safestr) gives: $ (echo "Hi "; sleep 1; echo "There, World") | runHaskell ResumeCatch.hs ---------- ?I ?HERE ---------- ?I ?HERE{- ResumeCatch.hs:30:8-57: Non-exhaustive patterns in function process -} all is well that ends well ---------- the usual caveats about unsafePerformIO apply, so perhaps you wouldn't want to use this in a database library.. claus