I went back and tried to convert the YAHT example to Monad, importing Monad, commenting out all but the data descriptions and the searchAll function, and finally replacing success, failure, augment, and combine in the searchAll function with return, fail, >>=, and mplus. *Main> let g = Graph [(1,'a'),(2,'b'),(3,'c'),(4,'d')] [(1,2,'p'),(2,3,'q'),(1,4,'r'),(4,3,'s')] *Main> searchAll g 1 3 :: [[Int]] [[1,2,3],[1,4,3]] *Main> searchAll g 1 3 :: Maybe [Int] Just [1,2,3] *Main> searchAll g 3 1 :: Maybe [Int] Nothing *Main> searchAll g 3 1 :: [[Int]] [] All good so far, but then tried to convert Failable from Computation to Monad instance Monad Failable where return = Success fail = Fail >>= (Success x) f = f x >>= (Fail s) _ = Fail s mplus (Fail _) y = y mplus x _ = x and got the following error. Prelude> :l graph5 [1 of 1] Compiling Main ( graph5.hs, interpreted ) graph5.hs:34:4: parse error on input `>>=' Failed, modules loaded: none. Prelude> Complete code follows. Michael ========================= import Monad data Failable a = Success a | Fail String deriving (Show) data Graph v e = Graph [(Int,v)] [(Int,Int,e)] {- class Computation c where success :: a -> c a failure :: String -> c a augment :: c a -> (a -> c b) -> c b combine :: c a -> c a -> c a instance Computation Maybe where success = Just failure = const Nothing augment (Just x) f = f x augment Nothing _ = Nothing combine Nothing y = y combine x _ = x instance Computation Failable where success = Success failure = Fail augment (Success x) f = f x augment (Fail s) _ = Fail s combine (Fail _) y = y combine x _ = x -} instance Monad Failable where return = Success fail = Fail >>= (Success x) f = f x >>= (Fail s) _ = Fail s mplus (Fail _) y = y mplus x _ = x {- instance Computation [] where success a = [a] failure = const [] augment l f = concat (map f l) combine = (++) searchAll g@(Graph vl el) src dst | src == dst = success [src] | otherwise = search' el where search' [] = failure "no path" search' ((u,v,_):es) | src == u = (searchAll g v dst `augment` (success . (u:))) `combine` search' es | otherwise = search' es -} searchAll g@(Graph vl el) src dst | src == dst = return [src] | otherwise = search' el where search' [] = fail "no path" search' ((u,v,_):es) | src == u = (searchAll g v dst >>= (return . (u:))) `mplus` search' es | otherwise = search' es |