I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out how can I store or pass a type in scala. What I want to achive is something like this: abstract class Foo( val theType : type ) object Foo{ case object Foo1 extends Foo(String) case object Foo2 extends Foo(Long) } So at some point I can do this: theFoo match{ case String => "Is a string" case Long => "Is a long" } and when obtaining the object being able to cast it: theFoo.asInstanceOf[Foo1.theType] Is this possible? If is possible, is a good aproach? What I'm trying to achieve ultimately is writing a pseudo schema for byte stream treatment. E.g if I have an schema Array(Foo1,Foo1,Foo2,Foo3,Foo1) I could parse Arrays of bytes that complain with that schema, if at some point I have a different stream of bytes I could just write a new schema Array(Foo3, Foo4, Foo5) without having to reimplement parsing logic. Regards,