Hello I have developed a new I/O library that IMHO is so sharp that it can eventually replace the current I/O facilities based on using Handles. The main advantage of the new library is its strong modular design using typeclasses. The library consists of small independent modules, each implementing one type of stream (file, memory buffer, pipe) or one part of common stream functionality (buffering, Char encoding, locking). 3rd-party libs can easily add new stream types and new common functionality. Other benefits of the new library include support for streams functioning in any monad, Hugs and GHC compatibility, high speed and an easy migration path from the existing I/O library. You can find further information about the library at the page http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library/Streams and download it as http://freearc.narod.ru/Streams.tar.gz I thank Jean Philippe Bernardy, Jared Updike and Henk Jan Van Tuyl, who are corrected library documentation ps: the library also includes two more layers - binary I/O and serialization - on top of Streams. now i'm hardly working on documenting these modules -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:bulatz@HotPOP.com