I've not been following the Global variables debate too closely, it seeming to have something of a religious wars flavour, but I noticed that an example being proposed was how to achieve a "one shot" execution. Here's something I did when working on modifications to the HaXML parser: [[ -- Memoization of withSocketsDo to prevent multiple calls. -- (cf. http://tangentsoft.net/wskfaq/articles/lame-list.html) socketsInitialized :: Bool socketsInitialized = unsafePerformIO ( withSocketsDo ( return True ) ) ]] Does it work as I think it does? ARe there any problems I'm overlooking? #g ------------ Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact