Re: a monadic if or case?

whatisit :: String -> IO String whatisit f = do ifM doesDirectoryExist f then return "dir" else ifM doesFileExist f then return "file" else return "nothing"

Is there any way I could do something like this?

Not with the syntactic sugar of 'if'. But you can write [warning: untested code ahead] ifM :: IO Bool -> IO a -> IO a -> IO a ifM test yes no = do b <- test if b then yes else no And then ifM (doesDirectoryExist f) (return "dir") (ifM (doesFileExist f) (return "file") (return "nothing)) ) Arjan