Hey, I am studying Haskell as a unit at University. I find the concept and design idea's of Haskell interesting but I am finding my self struggling to understand the relationship between the normal state and IO state of Haskell. This is my situation: I have created 12 functions for a program which take in two types: type Catalogue = [Track] type Playlist = [Track] The definition for track is as follows: -- Track = ArtistDetails Title Length PCount data Track = Track ArtistType String Float Int deriving (Show,Eq,Read) -- Popular = Artist | Composor Performer data ArtistType = Popular String | Classical String String deriving (Show,Eq,Read) I have managed to save the data to a file using this code: --Saving Data saveData :: String -> Catalogue -> IO() saveData fileName catalogue = writeFile fileName (show catalogue) Problem now is reading the data back into the program. When I read the data back into the program it comes as IO [Track]. This is the code I have been using to load the data: loadData :: String -> Catalogue loadData fileName = do x <- readFile fileName return (read x :: Catalogue) I think I have missed a trick some where or I am using IO wrong, I really don't know. I believe it is the latter. I have been told that my definition for the function is wrong and that I should use the lazy approach to fix the problem. But this still leaves me with IO [Track]. Could someone inform me on what I am doing wrong? Thank you in advance Smoky