Thank you. Ive also found other references online, but I want to see the one installed locally in my system.

I come from Smalltalk where everything is accessible and modifiable.

Is the Prelude and other base modules distributed in compiled form only?

One of the joys of Hugs is that it includes the H98 Prelude, a real vade mecum for both beginners and experts. It is one of the reasons that for everyday use I resort more often to Hugs than to ghci. The modern Prelude, spread over dozens of files, and programmed at a higher level of abstraction, will not be as useful to a beginner as the H98 Prelude is. Nevertheless it's a valuable and fundamental resource. And it's real code, snatches of which one may borrow as a basis for special modification. That is not true of stuff served up by Hoogle. Quite properly, the ghc distribution contains a compiled version of the Prelude. But that doesn't preclude including the source. It would be a public service to do so. ["You can always get it with Cabal" is unreasonably dismissive. Why should beginners have to master another arcane subject just to get a handbook for their newest toy?] Doug McIlroy