Hello all, I've been reading through "Tackling the Awkward Squad" [1] and am implementing the definitions "left as exercises" as I go. For section 2.2, I define: putLine :: [Char] -> IO () putLine :: mapM_ putChar where mapM_ :: Monad m => (a -> m b) -> a -> m () mapM_ f [] = return () mapM_ f (x:xs) = (f x) >> (mapM_ f xs) which works without difficulty. For the sake of learning, I decided to implement mapM as well. My definition (below) works, but seems really in-elegant. I checked the prelude source and found mapM defined in terms of sequence, which has some do-notation I'm not so clear on. I'm trying to avoid using do notation in my implementation because it still feels like magic. I'll work on de-sugaring do notation again once I have a solid handle on (>>=), (>>), and return. Any suggestions for cleaning this up would be much appreciated! mapM :: Monad m => (a -> m b) -> [a] -> m [b] mapM f [] = return [] mapM f (x:xs) = consMM (f x) (mapM f xs) consMM :: Monad m => m a -> m [a] -> m [a] consMM mx mxs = mx >>= ((flip consM) mxs) where consM x mxs = mxs>>=(\xs -> return (x:xs)) Thank you, vale [1] Suggested by apfelmus in a recent email to the list: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/marktoberdorf/