Sorry if this question is too basic, but I am trying to learn Haskell and from tiem to time I get stuck. (And forgive me, I haev a heavy procedural background, so functional programming is hard for me) I am trying to use 'read' to create a random generator, applying it on some text. As the Report, says: # In addition, 'read' may be used to map an arbitrary string (not # necessarily one produced by 'show') onto a value of type 'StdGen'. # In general, the 'read' instance of 'StdGen' has the following # properties: # # * It guarantees to succeed on any string. # # * It guarantees to consume only a finite portion of the string. # # * Different argument strings are likely to result in different # results. But it does not succeed on "any string". Code follows \begin{code} module Pepe where import Random pepin :: StdGen pepin = read "cosita" pepe :: StdGen pepe = read "cositaLinda" \end{code} If I evaluate pepin, results are: Hugs> pepin 38273 1 :: StdGen (360 reductions, 554 cells) But if I evaluate pepe, all changes: Hugs> pepe Program error: Prelude.read: no parse (380 reductions, 694 cells) Am I misunderstanding something, or is StdGen -> read buggy? As you can see, I am using Hugs, version Sep 2006 to test. TIA, best regards, Zara