Clojure: How to to recur upon exception?

Question

I am trying to execute a func several times before giving up upon exceptions. But it is not valid in Clojure to recur from catch block. How can this be achieved ?

(loop [tries 10]
  (try
    (might-throw-exception)
    (catch Exception e
      (when (pos? tries) (recur (dec tries))))))

java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: Cannot recur from catch/finally 

The best I could find is the following clumsy solution (wrapping in func and calling it)

(defn do-it []
  (try
    (might-throw-exception)
    (catch Exception e nil)))

(loop [times 10]
  (when (and (nil? (do-it)) (pos? times))
    (recur (dec times))))

Answer 1

Macros are calling...

How about this:

(defn try-times*
  "Executes thunk. If an exception is thrown, will retry. At most n retries
  are done. If still some exception is thrown it is bubbled upwards in
  the call chain."
  [n thunk]
  (loop [n n]
    (if-let [result (try
                      [(thunk)]
                      (catch Exception e
                        (when (zero? n)
                          (throw e))))]
      (result 0)
      (recur (dec n)))))

(defmacro try-times
  "Executes body. If an exception is thrown, will retry. At most n retries
  are done. If still some exception is thrown it is bubbled upwards in
  the call chain."
  [n & body]
  `(try-times* ~n (fn [] ~@body)))