The question of Set monad comes up quite regularly, most recently at http://www.ittc.ku.edu/csdlblog/?p=134 Indeed, we cannot make Data.Set.Set to be the instance of Monad type class -- not immediately, that it. That does not mean that there is no Set Monad, a non-determinism monad that returns the set of answers, rather than a list. I mean genuine *monad*, rather than a restricted, generalized, etc. monad. It is surprising that the question of the Set monad still comes up given how simple it is to implement it. Footnote 4 in the ICFP 2009 paper on ``Purely Functional Lazy Non-deterministic Programming'' described the idea, which is probably folklore. Just in case, here is the elaboration, a Set monad transformer. {-# LANGUAGE TypeSynonymInstances, FlexibleInstances #-} module SetMonad where import qualified Data.Set as S import Control.Monad.Cont -- Since ContT is a bona fide monad transformer, so is SetMonadT r. type SetMonadT r = ContT (S.Set r) -- These are the only two places the Ord constraint shows up instance (Ord r, Monad m) => MonadPlus (SetMonadT r m) where mzero = ContT $ \k -> return S.empty mplus m1 m2 = ContT $ \k -> liftM2 S.union (runContT m1 k) (runContT m2 k) runSet :: (Monad m, Ord r) => SetMonadT r m r -> m (S.Set r) runSet m = runContT m (return . S.singleton) choose :: MonadPlus m => [a] -> m a choose = msum . map return test1 = print =<< runSet (do n1 <- choose [1..5] n2 <- choose [1..5] let n = n1 + n2 guard $ n < 7 return n) -- fromList [2,3,4,5,6] -- Values to choose from might be higher-order or actions test1' = print =<< runSet (do n1 <- choose . map return $ [1..5] n2 <- choose . map return $ [1..5] n <- liftM2 (+) n1 n2 guard $ n < 7 return n) -- fromList [2,3,4,5,6] test2 = print =<< runSet (do i <- choose [1..10] j <- choose [1..10] k <- choose [1..10] guard $ i*i + j*j == k * k return (i,j,k)) -- fromList [(3,4,5),(4,3,5),(6,8,10),(8,6,10)] test3 = print =<< runSet (do i <- choose [1..10] j <- choose [1..10] k <- choose [1..10] guard $ i*i + j*j == k * k return k) -- fromList [5,10]