[Haskell-cafe] Timeout exceptions sometimes don't work, even in pure (non FFI) code

1 Feb 2011

      I'm trying to test some properties with quickcheck. If these tests fail,
they will almost certainly fail by nontermination.
I've been using the 'within' function to catch these nontermination cases.
However, I was surprised to find that this doesn't always work.
'within' uses the 'timeout' function under the hood. Here is an example that
demonstrates the problem:

import System.Timeout
import Control.Exception

works :: Int -> Int
works x = sum $ cycle [x]

doesntWork :: Int -> Int
doesntWork x = last $ cycle [x]

test1 = timeout 1 $ evaluate $ works 5 == 5            -- terminates
test2 = timeout 1 $ evaluate $ doesntWork 5 == 5   -- never terminates

test1 returns Nothing as expected, but test2 never terminates. Why?

I thought timeout exceptions are supposed to always work with pure (non FFI)
Haskell code.
Is there any way I can work around this?

I'm using ghc 6.12.2

Thanks,

- Job

[Haskell-cafe] Timeout exceptions sometimes don't work, even in pure (non FFI) code

Job Vranish