I thank everyone who answered my last question. I think I am making progress. My new problem really has me confused. I guess it is because I am new to the language. To make this wode run, put the .txt file in under c:/ and then load the .hs file in hugs98. After that you can type the comman testReadFile at the main prompt. The result is: ["","assign","","int>",""] which seems all wrong to me since it is returning the tail of each string in my string list. When I just want the tail of the string list itself which should be ["<assign>","=","<int>","3"] The same type of thing happen when I tried returning the head of the list in which I believe the string "x<=<3" was returned when only "x" should have been retured. Any ideas why head and tail are acting on each string of my string list rather then the string list itself? Thanks much in advance. Rob