Not really seeing why Unique is in the IO monad, not deeply understanding the use of Haskell extensions in the State source, and wanting to try to learn a bit more about monads, I thought I'd try to write my own monad for the first time: something for producing a series of unique labels. This is how it turned out: ========================================================================== module Label (Label, Labeller, newLabel) where import Monad newtype Label = Label Int deriving (Eq, Ord) newtype Labeller a = Labeller (Int -> (Int, a)) instance Monad Labeller where return r = Labeller (\n -> (n, r)) (Labeller g) >>= y = let f m = let (r, n) = g m Labeller h = y n in h r in Labeller f newLabel :: Labeller Label newLabel = Labeller (\n -> (n + 1, Label n)) runLabeller :: Labeller a -> a runLabeller (Labeller l) = snd (l minBound) labelTest :: Labeller [Int] labelTest = do Label a <- newLabel Label b <- newLabel Label c <- newLabel Label d <- newLabel return [a,b,c,d] main = print (runLabeller labelTest) ========================================================================== I was thinking that maybe, (a) People could point out to me where I'm still confused, as revealed by my code. Is it needlessly complicated? (b) My code may be instructive to someone else. -- Mark