The report states about getChar, getLine, and getContents:

"By default, these input functions echo to standard output."

In version 1.3 of the report, it used to continue "Functions in the I/O library provide full control over echoing."

Apparently, this has been removed and the I/O library contains neither facilities to control echoing nor a specification of what the h-cousins hGetChar, hGetLine, and hGetContents are supposed to do wrt echoing. Can I rely on them not to echo their inputs?

Clearly the report is vague here, so I'll just comment on what GHC does. By default, input from a terminal will echo. The following functions are provided by System.IO (GHC only, not Hugs or NHC), and control terminal echoing: hSetEcho :: Handle -> Bool -> IO () hGetEcho :: Handle -> IO Bool Input from a non-terminal will not echo. GHC's IO library never does any actual echoing itself, it simply gives hints to the OS's terminal API to turn echoing on or off. Cheers, Simon