Peter wrote:
So, How am I supposed to get the value of an IO Monad, such as "IO String", without returning an IO Monad?
You read correctly, this is impossible. You already got some valid answers, and here's another variant that preserves most of the nice guarded expressions: recv_headers' :: Socket.Socket -> String -> IO [[String]] recv_headers' sock bulk = Socket.recv sock 1 >>= dispatch where dispatch "" = error "Connection died unexpectedly." dispatch "\n" | endswith bulk "\r\n\r" = return [["foo", "bar"]] dispatch _ = recv_headers' sock (bulk ++ received) Udo. -- "Gadgets are not necessarily an improvement, vide the succession: Blackboard -> Overhead Projector -> PowerPoint" -- E. W. Dijkstra