I've written a function that looks similar to this one getList = find 5 where find 0 = return [] find n = do ch <- getChar if ch `elem` ['a'..'e'] then do tl <- find (n-1) return (ch : tl) else find n First, how do I fix the identation of the if then else? Second, I want to test this function, without hitting the filesystem. In C++ I would use a istringstream. I couldn't find a function that returns a Handle from a String. The closer thing that may work that I could find was making a pipe and convertind the file descriptor. Can I simplify that function to take it out of the IO monad? How? I thought about getContents, but that eats all input. Thanks in advance, Bruno