Dear Group, It seems to me this should be easy, but I can't quite figure out how to do it without a lot of typing. Here is the question: Suppose you have a data type like: Data Foo = Foo { a :: Int, b :: Int, ... many other fields ... y :: Int } deriving (Eq, Read, Show, Typeable, Data) Now I would like to add a field z :: Int to the end of Foo. If I have a ton of data out on disk, which I wrote with, say writeFile "a.data" (show foo) -- where foo is a [Foo] say 1000 long, I would like to get a new "a.data" file which has a new z::Int field. So far the only way I can think of is to make a new Data Foo1, which includes the z::Int, read in a.data as a list of Foo, write a function like: fooTofoo1 :: Foo -> Foo1 fooTofoo1 xx = Foo1 {a = a xx, ... y = y xx, z = 1} then write the file back out, and perhaps use emacs to query-replace all the Foo1's back to Foo's, add the z::Int field back into Foo, and read it back. Please tell me there is a better way. Thanks in advance. Best wishes, Henry Laxen PS: I have read syb1, and syb2 a couple of times now, but so far haven't been able to connect it with this kind of problem.