Hi Having got to the word counting example on the website: wordcount :: IO () wordcount = do wc <- wordcount' False 0 putStrLn (show wc) where wordcount' inword wc = do ch <- getc case ch of Nothing -> return wc Just c -> handlechar c wc inword handlechar c wc _ | (c == ' ' || c == '\n' || c == '\t') = wordcount' False wc handlechar _ wc False = wordcount' True $! wc + 1 handlechar _ wc True = wordcount' True wc Eeek. That's uglier than the C version, and has no abstract components. A much simpler version: main = print . length . words =<< getContents Beautiful, specification orientated, composed of abstract components. Code doesn't get much more elegant than that. Plus it also can be made to outperform C (http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~ndm/supero/) Thanks Neil