I'm having a lot of trouble mixing file io and wxhaskell's varCreate/Get/Set functions. I have functions readWords :: String -> IO WordMap wordGrid :: WordMap -> Layout And within my GUI code, the following compiles (ignores the variable, basically): words <- varCreate (do {w <- readWords "words"; return w}) wGrid <- do w <- readWords "words" return $ wordGrid w but I can't get the following (noncompiling code, but it shows what I'm trying to do) working: wGrid <- do w <- varGet words return $ wordGrid w Could someone give me a minimal example of reading in a list of words from a file, binding a wxHaskell variable to the list, and then mapping some GUI code over it? (Also, I'm making the base assumption that varSet and varGet are wxHaskell's analogue of the State monad - should I be looking at using StateT instead?) martin