hei, I want to force evaluation on an arbitrary expression. What I have found is only strict datatypes (the '!' thing), but not a strictness idiom for arbitrary subexpressions. (I want this for debugging mostly, so if there is a better way to unsafePerformIO something in one piece I would be happy with that, too.) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ veryLongString = "..." data StrictThingy = StrictThingy ! String main :: IO () main = do hPutStr stdout veryLongString -- lazy veryLongString `seq` hPutStr stdout veryLongString -- still lazy? (StrictThingy veryLongString) `seq` hPutStr stdout veryLongString -- strict (or at least i hope it is) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Problem with the last line is that it doesn't work for arbitrary types, and it's kind of ugly. What I would like to have is something like: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ hPutStr stdout ! veryLongString ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ but I guess it's not that easy? Sorry for asking without consulting the list archives, but I promise I'll add it to the faq in the wiki once i understood. (-: I am using ghci and ghc, latest ubuntu package, but I am happy to switch to new versions. thanks, matthias