Hello list! I've been experimenting with emulating subtyping and heterogeneous collections in Haskell. I need this to parse a binary representation of objects of a class hierarchy in C++ program. So far I implemented upcasting using a chain of type classes and now I'm playing with heterogeneous lists. For future purposes It would be ideal to be able to have something like these functions: upcast_list :: [LikeC] -> [LikeA] downcast_list :: [LikeA] -> [LikeC] First one only replaces the existential wrapper leaving the actual value intact, and the second one also filters the list, passing the elements with specific enough type. I can implement this particular functions, but what's about a more general one? Something like cast_list :: [a] -> [b], where a and b are existential types from one hierarchy. Something like LikeA and LikeC in my example. Is my approach feasible? Is there a better one? Am I missing something obvious? Any relevant advices are welcome. The example code follows: {-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances, UndecidableInstances, OverlappingInstances, ExistentialQuantification, DeriveDataTypeable #-} import Data.Typeable import Data.Maybe data A = A {a_x :: Int} deriving (Show, Typeable) data B = B {b_x :: Int, b_a :: A} deriving (Show, Typeable) data C = C {c_z :: Int, c_b :: B} deriving (Show, Typeable) data D = D {d_w :: Int, d_c :: C, d_a :: A} deriving (Show, Typeable) class ALike x where toA :: x -> A class BLike x where toB :: x -> B class CLike x where toC :: x -> C class DLike x where toD :: x -> D instance ALike A where toA = id instance BLike B where toB = id instance CLike C where toC = id instance DLike D where toD = id instance ALike B where toA = b_a instance BLike C where toB = c_b instance CLike D where toC = d_c instance (BLike x) => (ALike x) where toA = (toA :: B -> A) . toB instance CLike x => BLike x where toB = toB . toC a1 = A 1 b1 = B 2 (A 2) c1 = C 3 b1 d1 = D 4 c1 (A 10) print_a :: ALike x => x -> String print_a v = "A = " ++ show (a_x $ toA v) sum_a :: (ALike x, ALike y) => x -> y -> String sum_a v1 v2 = "A1 = " ++ show (a_x $ toA v1) ++ " A2 = " ++ show (a_x $ toA v2) data LikeA = forall a. (ALike a, Typeable a) => LikeA a instance ALike LikeA where toA (LikeA x) = toA x get_mono :: Typeable b => [LikeA] -> [b] get_mono = catMaybes . map ((\(LikeA x) -> cast x)) data LikeC = forall c. (CLike c, Typeable c) => LikeC c instance CLike LikeC where toC (LikeC x) = toC x lst_a = [LikeA a1, LikeA b1, LikeA c1, LikeA d1] lst_c = [LikeC c1, LikeC d1]