The function below always returns "", rather than the file's contents. _Real World Haskell_ touches on how laziness can make this problimatic, without really giving a solution, other than throwing in a putStr to force evaluation, which can't be done here. How can I make hGetContents strict, to ensure the file contents are really read before it gets closed? readFile' file = do f <- openFile file ReadMode -- locking will go here s <- hGetContents f hClose f return s Also, I noticed that opening a file and locking it involves a very verbose seeming dance. (It's 2 lines of code in most other languages.) Does this indicate that few people bother with file locking in Haskell and so it still has these rough edges, or that there's a better way to do it that I have not found yet? openLocked file = do handle <- openFile file ReadMode lockfd <- handleToFd handle -- closes handle waitToSetLock lockfd (ReadLock, AbsoluteSeek, 0, 0) handle' <- fdToHandle lockfd return handle' -- see shy jo