Hi guys, Thanks to everyone who helped me, I hit a milestone this evening and finally got the (small) bit of functionality I was working on, working! A huge "thank you" to everyone who has taken the time to use very small words to explain things to me! (I just need to sort out some nicer error handling now...) Just one more question... for today. Here's my code; import Network import System.IO (hGetLine,hClose,hPutStrLn,hSetBuffering,BufferMode(..),Handle,stdout) import Data.Bits import Data.Binary import Data.Binary.Put import Data.Binary.Get import qualified Data.ByteString.Lazy as L import qualified Data.ByteString.UTF8 as UTF import Control.Monad import Control.Exception (evaluate) ping a t = do h <- connectTo a (PortNumber t) hSetBuffering h NoBuffering L.hPut h (encode (0xFAB10000 :: Word32)) numStrings <- fmap (fromIntegral . runGet getWord64be) $ L.hGet h 8 names <- (fmap (runGet $ readStrings numStrings) $ L.hGetContents h) evaluate names hClose h return names readStrings :: Int -> Get [String] readStrings n = replicateM n $ do len <- getWord32be name <- getByteString $ fromIntegral len return $ UTF.toString name This works in GHCi exactly as I want it to. Note the call to "evaluate" in the ping function which allows me to close the handle before returning the IO [String]. This behaviour prints out the list of Strings as read from the handle in GHCi, exactly what I wanted it to do. Here's the strange part; If I remove the evalute line, and instead have; names <- evaluate (fmap (runGet $ readStrings numStrings) $ L.hGetContents h) GHCI claims that this is okay, but when I call ping I don't get any output. I don't get any errors either, but I would expect to see the same list of Strings as before. Can anyone explain to me why that happpens? I'm assuming it's something to do with the "<-" magic, but I don't know what. Thanks, Tom -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/