random strings in haskell

Some stuff I am doing at work will require me to generate a lot of random strings. I decided to use haskell to generate the data. There are some interesting approaches for using Test.QuickCheck for generating such values, but looking at the sample code (here for example), I wasn't that motivated to get into type class work for what seemed like a simple task. I ended up with a solution based on Control.Monad.Random, which provides a nice monadic interface and doesn't require too much coding on my part. below is a short sample:

gist

last update 2012-02-29