I'm a Haskell beginner. But this is my attempt at solving your algo functionally in Haskell. Note there's no shared state. fn ("a":lines') = fn (skip2 lines')

I'm a Haskell beginner. But this is my attempt at solving your algo functionally in Haskell. Note there's no shared state. fn ("a":lines') = fn (skip2 lines') fn (l:lines') = (parseLine l) : fn lines' skip2 = tail . tail Gave spaces above for readability. The function "fn" pattern matches "a", then skips 2 elements of the array and recursively calls itself. Haskell programmers can correct if the program is correct/sound. I just wrote this from my mind. Not near any computer now.