[Haskell-cafe] Hash table constructors return table in IO Monad. Why?

[michael rice]

Is there some reason why ALL the ways to create a hash table return one in the IO Monad, but all the functions for retrieving a value from a hash table take as an argument a hash table NOT in the IO Monad?
Michael
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Prelude Data.HashTable> let ht = fromList id [(5,'a'),(6,'b')]Prelude Data.HashTable> fmap ((flip Data.HashTable.lookup) 6) htPrelude Data.HashTable>
Prelude Data.HashTable> :t fmap ((flip Data.HashTable.lookup) 6) htfmap ((flip Data.HashTable.lookup) 6) ht :: IO (IO (Maybe Char))
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