| Usually, I wouldn't make such a fuss, but here documents are really | not some new and experimental feature. They're an old hat, and a | very useful hat. The only question is how to integrate them into the | rest of Haskell. At a time when many developers pay careful attention to internationalization ("I18n"), which requires careful separation of program text (functionality) and user text (display), a feature that instead ties them more closely together seems to be a step in the wrong direction. The same argument can be made with respect to the widely recognized advantages of separating functionality (e.g., model/controller) from user interface (e.g., view). Personally, I would prefer a Haskell without Here documents. Instead of: greeting = "..." main = putStrLn $ trim text I would be happy to write: main = displayResource "greeting" leaving the system to locate the text of the greeting from a separate (perhaps locale sensitive) source at runtime, and to display it in an appropriate manner. In other words, I'd prefer to see the effort that might be spent on standardizing and implementing Here documents instead directed to designing and building I18n libraries (probably based on a more general "resource bundle" mechanism). Ultimately, it comes down to a question of what you're trying to achieve. Do you envisage Haskell as an elegant scripting language that competes with perl and ruby for quick but useful hacks? Or do you think it might better serve as a platform for writing significant user level applications with fancy user interfaces and international appeal? Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, and the presence or absence of Here documents or resource bundles will not force the language in either way. But it will determine the "feel" of the language, and so have an impact on the way that it is perceived and used. All the best, Mark