At the moment, I have a user defined data type on which I have defined some operations, instantiated (not derived) Eq and so on. However, for efficiency I'm storing the actual data in UArrays of Word8. In order for everything to work, I need functions 'toW8' and 'fromW8' to map between the data type and its representation in the array. I gather it is impossible to hide the 'Eq' instance of Word8 and/or redefine it, but could this be circumvented by instead of data Foo = F | G instance Eq Foo where F == _ = True _ == _ = False defining something like newtype Foo = F Word8 f, g, h :: Foo f = F 0 g = F 1 and using the same instance declaration? And will it still fit into a UArray? (It is of course possible that, while profiling indicates otherwise, the conversion functions have little impact in practice; i.e. the optimizer will do away with them.) -kzm -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants