There are couple of implementarion of strings: * String - this is default, it is list of characters and it was a mistake. * ByteString and LazyByteString - this represents array of 8bit characters. Performant but does not handle encodings * Text and LazyText - this is what you want to use when yiu work with text, since it represent text in unicode.

There is mess in these types. s9me libraries are using different types, so you might have to convert between those and it can be confusing, and the conversion apis are not unified. But if you manage in your project consistently use single type (say Text), then you'll actually have a great time working with strings. Its problem if you want to quickly mash together few libraries that does not use same types, since it get messy.

Reason for this is mostly historic.