Monadic and General Iteratees: Messaging and exception handling.

Iteratees use an internal exception handling mechanism that is parallel to that provided by Exception. This allows the iteratee framework to handle its own exceptions outside IO.

Iteratee exceptions are divided into two categories, IterException and EnumException. IterExceptions are exceptions within an iteratee, and EnumExceptions are exceptions within an enumerator.

Enumerators can be constructed to handle an IterException with Data.Iteratee.Iteratee.enumFromCallbackCatch. If the enumerator detects an iteratee exception, the enumerator calls the provided exception handler. The enumerator is then able to continue feeding data to the iteratee, provided the exception was successfully handled. If the handler could not handle the exception, the IterException is converted to an EnumException and processing aborts.

Exceptions can also be cleared by Data.Iteratee.Iteratee.checkErr, although in this case the iteratee continuation cannot be recovered.

When viewed as Resumable Exceptions, iteratee exceptions provide a means for iteratees to send control messages to enumerators. The seek implementation provides an example. Data.Iteratee.Iteratee.seek stores the current iteratee continuation and throws a SeekException, which inherits from IterException. Data.Iteratee.IO.enumHandleRandom is constructed with enumFromCallbackCatch and a handler that performs an hSeek. Upon receiving the SeekException, enumHandleRandom calls the handler, checks that it executed properly, and then continues with the stored continuation.

As the exception hierarchy is open, users can extend it with custom exceptions and exception handlers to implement sophisticated messaging systems based upon resumable exceptions.