GHC.Internal.Control.Monad.Fail

When a value is bound in do-notation, the pattern on the left hand side of <- might not match. In this case, this class provides a function to recover.

A Monad without a MonadFail instance may only be used in conjunction with pattern that always match, such as newtypes, tuples, data types with only a single data constructor, and irrefutable patterns (~pat).

Instances of MonadFail should satisfy the following law: fail s should be a left zero for Control.Monad.>>=,

fail s >>= f  =  fail s

If your Monad is also Control.Monad.MonadPlus, a popular definition is

fail _ = mzero

fail s should be an action that runs in the monad itself, not an exception (except in instances of MonadIO). In particular, fail should not be implemented in terms of error.