Deprecate and remove Prelude.catch and System.IO.Error.{catch,try}

Prelude and System.IO.Error both export an old version of catch, which only catches IOErrors, and System.IO.Error additionally exports try with the same problem.

These exports are annoying for people who want to use the modern exception handling functions in Control.Exception, as you need to explicitly either import the Prelude with catch hidden, or give the module of the function you want to use.

They may also be confusing for beginners, who may not expect to have to use anything other than the catch function in the default scope to catch all exceptions.

I believe these functions are only there for historical reasons, and are old cruft that we should tidy up, so I propose that in the base package that comes with GHC 7.2 we deprecate these old functions, and in 7.4 we remove them.

Suggested deadline: 24 Jan 2011.

Trac metadata

Trac field	Value
Version	7.0.1
Type	Bug
TypeOfFailure	OtherFailure
Priority	normal
Resolution	Unresolved
Component	libraries/base
Test case
Differential revisions
BlockedBy
Related
Blocking
CC
Operating system
Architecture