Hello Shannon, Tuesday, March 7, 2006, 10:52:01 PM, you wrote: SjB> The function itself is a ParseContextTransformation. It takes a SjB> context, transforms it, and returns it. Most of the pipelines in the SjB> whole application are ParseContextTransformations, and the |> (or $ or SjB> .) are ways of tying them together. My questions concerning Monads SjB> are in this example are: SjB> 1. Monads apply a strategy to computation. For instance, the list SjB> monad applies the strategy, "Try it with each of my members." What SjB> part of my code is the strategy? SjB> 2. Monads are containers that wrap a value. For instance, the Maybe 1&2 is only possible variations, but they don't covers everything. in GENERAL, monad is the way to write code as high-order functions that then will be used in some special way. this allows to hide part of computation details in the rules of this internal processing what you need here, imho, is a state monad. your context will become a state and monad should contain operations to read/write this state. to be exact, you should use State monad here, which already contains appropriate operations in the State monad, each action has type: type State a = StateType -> (a, StateType) i.e. each action is higher order function which transforms state (having type StateType) and in addition can return value of type 'a' are you read http://www.nomaware.com/monads/monad_tutorial.zip ? it's comprehensive tutorial about monads -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com