(I still think it's a bug though:-)
It is definitely not a bug... you cannot assert that the types: Either String a Either String b are both equal ant not equal at the same time. You either mean: f :: (a->a) -> Either String a -> Either String a Or you mean f :: (a->b) -> Either String a -> Either String b actually the second form a and b can be the same but they cannot be unified inside the closure. One way of doing this is to group all the string types on one side: so instead of: data A a = A a | B String | C String | D String you do: data A a = A a | B Strings data Strings = S1 String | S2 String | S3 String you can then write: f :: (a->b) -> A a -> A b f g (A a) = (A $ g a) f g (B a) = (B a) and use (S1 . B), (S2 . B), (S3 . B) to access each string. Keean.