So basically, if I have a (finite or infinite) list of (finite or infinite) lists of strings, is it possible to sort the list by length first and then by lexicographic order, excluding duplicates? A sample input/output would be: Input: [["a", "b",...], ["a", "aa", "aaa"], ["b", "bb", "bbb",...], ...] Output: ["a", "b", "aa", "bb", "aaa", "bbb", ...] I know that the input list is not a valid haskell expression but suppose that there is an input like that. I tried using merge algorithm but it tends to hang on the inputs that I give it. Can somebody explain and show a decent sorting function that can do this? If there isn't any function like that, can you explain why? In case somebody didn't understand what I meant by the sorting order, I meant that shortest length strings are sorted first AND if one or more strings are of same length then they are sorted using < operator. Thanks!