I have been trying to work through Graham Hutton's "Programming in Haskell", but have hit something of a snag in chapter 8.4. Hutton presents some sample code which I am trying to run, with no luck so far. Here is the code as I constructed it by gathering snippets presented across three pages. <code> module Main where -- as per Hutton page 75 type Parser a = String -> [(a, String)] -- page 75 return :: a -> Parser a return v = \inp -> [(v,inp)] -- page 76 failure :: Parser a failure = \inp -> [ ] item :: Parser Char item = \inp -> case inp of [ ] -> [ ] (x:xs)-> [(x,xs)] parse :: Parser a -> String -> [(a,String)] parse p inp = p inp -- page 77 p :: Parser (Char, Char) p = do x <- item item y <- item return (x,y) </code> When I tried to load this code, I got this error message: Ambiguous occurrence `return' It could refer to either `return', defined at /Users/joe/haskell/ parse2.hs:8:0 or `return', imported from Prelude OK. My reasoning was that Hutton took the trouble to define return, so I decided to use the local definition instead of the one in the Prelude. I changed the last line from "return (x,y)" to "Main.return (x,y)". The new error message is worse: Couldn't match expected type `Char' against inferred type `[(Char, String)]' In the expression: x In the first argument of `return', namely `(x, y)' In the expression: return (x, y)</blockquote> Hutton provided explicit type signatures, so I did not expect type issues. I decided to take another approach. The book has a website that lists errata and provides code listings. The code for chapter eight is at http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/Parsing.lhs When I read Hutton's code, I noticed that he begins by importing Monad. The code I list above is from chapter 8, pages 75-77 of the book. Monads have not yet been mentioned. The book's index shows that monads aren't mentioned till page 113, in chapter 10. I also notice that in his code, Hutton makes repeated use of a symbol P whose meaning I do not know. What do I have to do to make this code work? I know I can use Hutton's code from the website, but I expected the code presented in the book to work, or the code on the website to restrict itself to what has been discussed in the book. Am I missing something here? Thanks, David Cabana