hi. i am really stuck on this problem and i cant seem to figure it out and so i am posting this in the hopes someone will help me. i realize you prolly get this kind of question alot but the wiki and the papers i have been reading arent helping to clarify things. i am trying to write a little utility to make it easier to get rid of ports on my machine. the function that is giving me trouble is getDepends. it takes the name of a port and opens the appropriate +CONTENTS file and returns the dependencies it finds. here is the function and its helper. getDepends :: String -> [String] getDepends p = do handle <- openFile (portsDir ++ p) ReadMode fetchDepends handle fetchDepends :: Handle -> [String] fetchDepends handle = do l <- hGetLine handle e <- hIsEOF handle case (not e) of -- ifs keep giving indent errors so ill just use case True -> case (matchRegex (mkRegex "^@pkgdep") l) of Just [a] -> [drop 8 l] ++ (fetchDepends handle) _ -> fetchDepends handle False -> "" here is ghci's error messages. Compiling Pheobe ( Phoebe.hs, interpreted ) Phoebe.hs:19: Couldn't match `[]' against `IO' Expected type: [t] Inferred type: IO Handle In the application `openFile (portsDir ++ p) ReadMode' In a 'do' expression pattern binding: handle <- openFile (portsDir ++ p) ReadMode Phoebe.hs:24: Couldn't match `[]' against `IO' Expected type: [t] Inferred type: IO String In the application `hGetLine handle' In a 'do' expression pattern binding: l <- hGetLine handle Failed, modules loaded: none. could someone be so kind as to explain what the problem is? sincerly, chris moline