Hello, I get funny results when I call getSymbolicLinkStatus in ghc 6.8.2 on Ubuntu 7.10. This happens on several systems and has been confirmed by other people. Though, some people on almost the exact same system claimed to not see it at all. Here is an interactive example with ghci, note how the result changes from run to run. (Although not shown below, the values do sometimes repeat, so it is not completely random): Prelude> System.Posix.Files.getSymbolicLinkStatus "/etc/motd" >>= print . System.Posix.Files.fileID 13165085651657739420 Prelude> System.Posix.Files.getSymbolicLinkStatus "/etc/motd" >>= print . System.Posix.Files.fileID 13165312309966851228 Prelude> System.Posix.Files.getSymbolicLinkStatus "/etc/motd" >>= print . System.Posix.Files.fileID 623410571888290073 Prelude> System.Posix.Files.getSymbolicLinkStatus "/etc/motd" >>= print . System.Posix.Files.fileID 12892261005034 If I *compile* the following (with or without optimization): module Main where import System.Posix.Files main = do getSymbolicLinkStatus "/etc/motd" >>= print . fileID getSymbolicLinkStatus "/etc/motd" >>= print . fileID getSymbolicLinkStatus "/etc/motd" >>= print . fileID getSymbolicLinkStatus "/etc/motd" >>= print . fileID Then I get all 0: /tmp # ./test 0 0 0 0 I have tested the same code under GHC 6.6 and 6.4 and it works fine. Additionally, getFileStatus, seems to work fine everytime. (Unfortunately, I really need getSymbolicLinkStatus). If anyone has a work-around or fix that I can use in the next 15 hours, that would be extremely useful ;) Thanks in advance! j.