The thread on the use of "show" and print to display an Int value, brought up a problem I had early on... the one of cleanly displaying a Char value, on a line all by itself.. My first attempts: This was just plain hard to read: with the character t being where it was: Prelude> putChar $ head "this and that" tPrelude> ----------------------- So I tried this and of course ... type mismatch: Prelude> putStrLn $ head "this and that" <interactive>:1:16: Couldn't match `String' against `Char' Expected type: [String] Inferred type: [Char] In the first argument of `head', namely `"this and that"' In the second argument of `($)', namely `head "this and that"' ---------------------- So I did this... to manually turn it to a string and it does work, but a little cumbersome to work into other function calls: Prelude> putStrLn $ (head "this and that"):[] t ------------- so the definition of putCharLn came to life {may be in some library already and I just haven't found it yet.. but it is in my toolbox now}: Prelude> let putCharLn c = putStrLn (c:[]) Prelude> and an application of it: Prelude> putCharLn $ head "this and that" t --------------- now I also have the char to string conversion alone: c2Str c = c:[] Prelude> let c2Str c = c:[] Prelude> c2Str 'A' "A" ------------------ Now this is almost too trivial a thing to mention these gizmos... what with all the monadic constructions that greater minds toss about on this list.. and I am trying to get understanding of that still, but .... sometimes we just accept the unacceptable little irritants rather than just code a solution, no matter how simple it is. There are probably troves of simple workarounds out there that seem too trivial to mention but hey, share 'em... might hit a guy like me that says. "now why didn't I think to do that?" happy days, gene