I've looked all around but haven't found a nice syntax for this -- anyone have suggestions?: What I'd like to do is assign toplevel variable names to inner elements of a structure. Pseudocode for what I'd like to do is: things = [ foo@"thing1" , bar@"thing2" ] The major difference from just `foo = "thing1" ; things = [foo, ...` is that it's much more visually clear which values are in `things` (imagine I create a `baz` but forget to add it to `things`). The best I've found (which is not at all ideal) is to say e.g.: things@ [ foo , bar , baz ] = ["thing1", "thing2", "thing3"] But of course, for starters, I run off the page very quickly. I don't see anything in the usual places (e.g. the Haskell Report), but has anyone come across this and found an elegant solution? Thanks! Tom