monad-bool implements a pair of Boolean monoids and monads, to support short-circuiting, value-returning computations similar to what Python and Ruby offer with their native && and || operators. For example, in Python you might see this: x = [1,2,3,0] print x[1] || x[3] -- prints "2" With this library, you can now mirror such code in Haskell: let x = [1,2,3,0] print $ (x !! 1) ||? (x !! 3) -- prints "Success 2" "Booleanness" is based on each type having an instance of the 'Control.Conditional.ToBool' type, for which only the basic types are covered (Bool, Int, Integer, Maybe a, Either a b, [a], Attempt a). If you wish to define a truth value for your own types, simply provide an instance for ToBool: instance ToBool MyType where toBool = ... The And/Or monoids use the Attempt library so that the actual type of the successful results depends on case analysis. It could be a list, a Maybe, an Either, or an exception in the IO Monad. The monad variants, AndM, AndMT, OrM and OrMT provide short-circuiting behavior in a Monad, which returns the last value returned before truth was determined. Here are two examples: Use 'onlyIf' with AndM and AndMT to guard later statements, which are only evaluated if every preceding 'onlyIf' evaluates to True. For example: foo :: AndM Int foo = do onlyIf (True == True) return 100 onlyIf (True == True) return 150 onlyIf (True == False) return 200 When run with `evalAndM foo (-1)` (where (-1) provides a default value), 'foo' returns 150. Use 'endIf' with OrM and OrMT to chain statements, which are only executed if every preceding 'endIf' evaluated to False. For example: bar :: OrM Int bar = do endIf (True == False) return 100 endIf (True == False) return 150 endIf (True == True) return 200 When run with `evalOrM bar (-1)` (where (-1) again provides a default value), 'bar' returns 150. And please, somebody let me know if this has already been done. A search for likely candidates did not turn up anything obvious in Hoogle, but as my knowledge of the whole of Hackage is minimal, I would appreciate any wiser minds that can inform me. Thank you, -- John Wiegley FP Complete Haskell tools, training and consulting http://fpcomplete.com johnw on #haskell/irc.freenode.net