With regards to the variable interpolation in strings problem, ..
as i mentioned, it is not difficult to hack something up, and in many cases, efficiency doesn't matter much for this part of the problem (though a standard, efficient, well-designed library would be welcome). but if we compare the attached example with here docs in perl or shell or .., we find that we can get rid of all that escaping and concatenation in strings, but: - the file name should be implicit (the current source) - the dictionary should be implicit (the current variable environment) the former might be easy to add to the language, and the latter would be a minor subset of template haskell functionality. but they need to be standardized and widely available to be of much use. claus ps here's the output: $ runhaskell Here.hs this is a poor man's here-document with quotes ", and escapes \, and line-breaks, and layout without escaping \" \\ \n, without concatenation. oh, and with some variables, $(too). <html> <head><title>very important page</title></head> <body> <verb> this is a poor man's here-document with quotes ", and escapes \, and line-breaks, and layout without escaping \" \\ \n, without concatenation. oh, and with some variables, $(too). </verb> </body> </html>