How would you know that the container specialization is different? Or in other words they are always different as it is a template. At least each container would have to support such a facility to remove the type by itself. Otherwise the implementation details could hide incompatibilities. std::vector could support a move_to member function: std::vector<my_distance_type> d1; // creates a new d2 with new metadata, but keeps the convertible actual data without copying // d1 is empty afterwards std::vector<double> d2 = d1.move_to<double>();