There's been mention of a Binary module; .. That said, there was also a post about using plain text. I tend to agree, except for certain cases. However, that is *not* to say that you should necessarily use Show/Read.
| Actually, "deriving binary" would be a nice thing to have in general | - even more, a way to add your own "deriving" things from within | Haskell, although I have no idea how such a thing would work. In this context, DrIFT should be mentioned: http://www.haskell.org/communities/11-2002/html/report.html#sect5.2.1.1 http://repetae.net/john/computer/haskell/DrIFT/ Binary is already supported, I think (what about the new Binary variants?), but adding new instance derivation rules for your own external formats shouldn't be too difficult. So nobody has to stick to Show/Read for convenience reasons if there are other arguments against (such as those listed by Hal). Claus PS The Haskell ATerm Library might also be relevant? http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2002-May/009589.html (the jDrift mentioned there is subsumed by the upcoming Drift2.0, merging various previous versions)