[Haskell-cafe] question about show

Hello! I'm sure this has been answered many times before, but I can't find an explanation for this behavior anywhere. The question I have is a general one regarding 'show'. Why does main = do putStrLn "ü" ➜ ~ runhaskell test.hs ü and: main = do putStrLn $ show "ü" ➜ ~ runhaskell test.hs "\252" Thank you all for an enlightening answer already! Best, k