Erlang's bit syntax[1] is a great for building and breaking up binary structures. I've knocked up something similar (although a little clumsy) for Haskell: http://www.imperialviolet.org/binary/bitsyntax/ http://www.imperialviolet.org/binary/bitsyntax/BitSyntax.hs I'm sure that this isn't the best possible way to do this, but it suffices at this stage for many problems. [1] http://www.erlang.org/doc/doc-5.4.12/doc/programming_examples/bit_syntax.htm... -- Adam Langley agl@imperialviolet.org