Hi all The report says "The layout rule matches only those open braces that it has inserted" in the lexical structure section. However, in the syntax section function L starts L (t:ts) (m:ms) = } : (L (t:ts) ms) if parse-error(t) (Note 1) which AFAICT will implicitly close an explicit open brace. Testing with "foo = let { x = 5 in x" shows hugs, ghc and nhc98 all seem to agree with me. L (t:ts) (m:ms) = } : (L (t:ts) ms) if m /= 0 && parse-error(t) (Note 1) Along similar lines, I think writing the last two lines as L [] [0] = [] L [] (m:ms) = } : L [] ms if m /=0 (Note 5) would be clearer. In fact as the preeceding text says 'and "" for the empty stream' I think it may be written correctly but have gotten lost in the conversion from whatever it is really written in. Thanks Ian