On 26 November 2010 19:50, Russ Abbott <russ.abbott@gmail.com> wrote:
P.S. I'll admit that I've spent virtually no time with monads and would prefer to avoid them if possible. 

Not monad, but 'knot's :)

If you tie the knot while creating those values, then, you don't need to update the same information in several places.

Have a look: http://haskell.org/wikisnapshot/TyingTheKnot.html

HTH,
Ozgur