[Haskell-beginners] State monad and destructive updates

Hi, As I have been trying to learn the monads a bit more, I have come to realize that State monad doesn't actually represent state. It just provides a convenient glue for threading state. Is that correct? If so, then for performance using state monad is as good as not using it at all. Is there a way to have state with destructive update? Thanks, -- Rohit Garg http://rpg-314.blogspot.com/ Graduate Student Applied and Engineering Physics Cornell University