OK, I am losing enough hair and accruing follicular damage more than I can take tonight, what is wrong, what have I done that is stupid and wrong etc... called: let routes = forwardRoutes M.empty csvdata -- [Record] from Text.CSV implemented: forwardRoutes m [] = m forwardRoutes m (row:rows) = case M.lookup m (row !! 0) of Just route -> M.update m (row !! 1):route Nothing -> M.insert from [] forwardRoutes m rows error: scread.hs:101:2: parse error on input `forwardRoutes' Um yeah, thanks, that's really helping me figure it out. All I wanted to do was build a map of keys and values where each value is a list that gradually accumulates(!) every row that ends at (!!1) from the same location (!!0) of my spreadsheet. I started off zipping with 'repeat []' and stuff but I just want to know what I have done to annoy the compiler enough to want to taunt me with that message. And, on the verge of posting I think the above code won't work anyway because I am not passing the new Map from 'insert' through....... ARGH! :(