diff --git a/CHANGES.md b/CHANGES.md
--- a/CHANGES.md
+++ b/CHANGES.md
@@ -35,3 +35,7 @@
     pat antiquotes.  The default match processing is now "rexView", an
     identifier that can be shadowed locally or hidden on import.
   * Removed 'maybeRead'.
+
+0.5.1: Feb 20 2014
+------------------
+  * Made the type of the default 'rexView' fully polymorphic.
diff --git a/Text/Regex/PCRE/Rex.hs b/Text/Regex/PCRE/Rex.hs
--- a/Text/Regex/PCRE/Rex.hs
+++ b/Text/Regex/PCRE/Rex.hs
@@ -432,7 +432,10 @@
 --   You can locally shadow this 'rexView' with your own version, if you wish.
 --   One good option is readMay from the safe package:
 --   <http://hackage.haskell.org/package/safe/docs/Safe.html#v:readMay>.
-rexView :: String -> String
+--
+--   The type of this identity rexView is fully polymorphic so that it can be
+--   used with either 'String' or 'ByteString'.
+rexView :: a -> a
 rexView = id
 
 mapSnd :: (t -> t2) -> (t1, t) -> (t1, t2)
diff --git a/rex.cabal b/rex.cabal
--- a/rex.cabal
+++ b/rex.cabal
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 Name:                rex
-Version:             0.5
+Version:             0.5.1
 Synopsis:            A quasi-quoter for typeful results of regex captures.
 Description:         Provides a quasi-quoter for regular expressions which
                      yields a tuple, of appropriate arity and types,