Hi, say I have a number of functions tryGetA, tryGetA', tryGetA'' … with the type tryGetA :: IO (Maybe A), what I want is to get A, trying these function one by one until a get Just a. The first shot code I came up with is using if: getA :: IO A getA = do a <- tryGetA if isJust a then return $ fromJust a else do a' <- tryGetA' if isJust a then return $ fromJust a' … there would be some default value at the end, this looks really ugly so I have tried another shot: firstJust :: a -> [Maybe a] -> a firstJust a [] = a firstJust a (x:xs) = if isJust x then fromJust x else firstJust a xs getA :: IO A getA = do r <- sequence [tryGetA, tryGetA', tryGetA'', …] return $ firstJust "OK" r which is a lot better, but I will appreciate any comment or suggestion. Thanks, Libor