note gaal Ordered variants in Haskell let you do things like <p><c> funky (x:y:xs) = ... -- I'm guaranteed to have two elements or more funky (x:xs) = ... {- This pattern would have matched a long list, but since the previous variant came first, we know the list is of length 1 or 2. * -} </c></p> This is incredibly useful sometimes. Okay, when I want <c>when</c> I know where to find it. :-) <p>* For folks not familiar with Haskell who count three or two items in the two patterns and don't see why I'm talking of lists of at least two and one or two elements respectively: in Haskell, "<c>(a:b)</c>" means a is an element and b is a list of zero or more elements. That's why by convention you see names like "xs" and "ys", pronounced "exes" and "whys", though there's nothing in the language to enforce names like that. The expression <c>(x:y:xs)</c> means <c>(x:(y:xs))</c>. 590113 590157