Same as C, Go also supports struct types. This article will introduce the basic knowledge of struct types and values in Go.
Each non-defined struct type literal starts with a struct
keyword
which is followed by a sequence of field definitions enclosed in a {}
.
Generally, each field definition is composed of a name and a type.
The number of fields of a struct type can be zero.
struct {
title string
author string
pages int
}
The above struct type has three fields. The types of the two fields
title
and author
are both string
.
The type of the pages
field is int
.
Some articles also call fields as member variables.
Consecutive fields with the same type can be declared together.struct {
title, author string
pages int
}
The size of a struct type is the sum of the sizes of all its field types plus the number of some padding bytes. The padding bytes are used to align the memory addresses of some fields. We can learn padding and memory address alignments in a later article.
The size of a zero-field struct type is zero.
Each struct field can be bound with a tag when it is declared. Field tags are optional, the default value of each field tag is a blank string. Here is an example showing non-default field tags.struct {
Title string `json:"title"`
Author string `json:"author,omitempty"`
Pages int `json:"pages,omitempty"`
}
The purpose of each field tag is application dependent.
In the above example, the field tags can help the functions in the
encoding/json
standard package to determine the field names in JSON texts,
in the process of encoding struct values into JSON texts or decoding JSON texts into struct values.
The functions in the encoding/json
standard package will
only encode and decode the exported struct fields, which is why
the first letters of the field names in the above example are all upper cased.
It is not a good idea to use field tags as comments.
Raw string literals (`...`
) are used more popular than
interpreted string literals ("..."
) for field tags in practice.
Unlike C language, Go structs don't support unions.
All above shown struct types are non-defined and anonymous. In practice, defined struct types are used more popularly.
Only exported fields of struct types shown up in a package can be used in other packages by importing the package. We can view non-exported struct fields as private/protected member variables.
The field tags and the order of the field declarations in a struct type matter for the identity of the struct type. Two non-defined struct types are identical only if they have the same sequence of field declarations. Two field declarations are identical only if their respective names, their respective types and their respective tags are all identical. Please note, two non-exported struct field names from different packages are always viewed as two different names.
A struct type can't have a field of the struct type itself, either directly or recursively.
In Go, the form T{...}
,
where T
must be a type literal or a type name,
is called as a composite literal and
is used as the value literals of some kinds of types,
including struct types and the container types introduced later.
S
whose underlying type
is struct{ x int; y bool}
,
the zero value of S
can be represented by the following
two variants of struct composite literal forms:
S{0, false}
.
In this variant, none field names are present but all field values must be present
by the field declaration orders.
S{x: 0, y: false}
, S{y: false, x: 0}
,
S{x: 0}
, S{y: false}
and S{}
.
In this variant, each field item is optional to be present and the order of the field items is not important.
The values of the absent fields will be set as the zero values of their respective types.
But if a field item is present, it must be presented with the FieldName: FieldValue
form.
The order of the field items in this form doesn't matter.
The form S{}
is the most used zero value representation of type S
.
If S
is a struct type imported from another package,
it is recommended to use the second form,
for the maintainer of the other package may add new fields for the type S
later,
which will make the uses of first forms become invalid.
Surely, we can also use the struct composite literals to represent non-zero struct value.
For a value v
of type S
, we can use
v.x
and v.y
, which are called selectors,
to represent the field values of v
.
Later, we call the dot .
in a selector as the property selection operator.
package main
import (
"fmt"
)
type Book struct {
title, author string
pages int
}
func main() {
book := Book{"Go 101", "Tapir", 256}
fmt.Println(book) // {Go 101 Tapir 256}
// Create a book value with another form.
// All of the three fields are specified.
book = Book{author: "Tapir", pages: 256, title: "Go 101"}
// None of the fields are specified. The title and
// author fields are both "", pages field is 0.
book = Book{}
// Only specify the author field. The title field
// is "" and the pages field is 0.
book = Book{author: "Tapir"}
// Initialize a struct value by using selectors.
var book2 Book // <=> book2 := Book{}
book2.author = "Tapir Liu"
book2.pages = 300
fmt.Println(book.pages) // 300
}
The last ,
in a composite literal is optional
if the last item in the literal and the closing }
are at the same line.
Otherwise, the last ,
is required.
For more details, please read
line break rules in Go.
var _ = Book {
author: "Tapir",
pages: 256,
title: "Go 101", // here, the "," can not be omitted.
}
// The last "," in the following line can be omitted.
var _ = Book{author: "Tapir", pages: 256, title: "Go 101",}
func f() {
book1 := Book{pages: 300}
book2 := Book{"Go 101", "Tapir", 256}
book2 = book1
// The above line is equivalent to the
// following lines.
book2.title = book1.title
book2.author = book1.author
book2.pages = book1.pages
}
Two struct values can be assigned to each other only if their types are identical or the types of the two struct values have the identical underlying type (considering field tags) and at least one of the two types is an non-defined type.
The fields of an addressable struct value are also addressable. The fields of an unaddressable struct value are also unaddressable. The fields of unaddressable struct values can't be modified. All composite literals, including struct composite literal are unaddressable.
Example:package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
type Book struct {
Pages int
}
var book = Book{} // book is addressable
p := &book.Pages
*p = 123
fmt.Println(book) // {123}
// The following two lines fail to compile,
// for Book{}.Pages is not addressable.
/*
Book{}.Pages = 123
p = &(Book{}.Pages) // <=> p = &(Book{}.Pages)
*/
}
Please, the precedence of the property selection operator .
in a selector is higher than the address-taken operator &
.
Generally, only addressable values can be taken addresses. But there is a syntactic sugar in Go, which allows us to take addresses on composite literals. A syntactic sugar is an exception in syntax to make programming convenient.
For example,package main
func main() {
type Book struct {
Pages int
}
// Book{100} is unaddressable but can
// be taken address.
p := &Book{100} // <=> tmp := Book{100}; p := &tmp
p.Pages = 200
}
Unlike C, in Go, there is not the ->
operator for selecting
struct fields through struct pointers.
In Go, the ->
operator is also represented with the dot sign .
.
package main
func main() {
type Book struct {
pages int
}
book1 := &Book{100} // book1 is a struct pointer
book2 := new(Book) // book2 is another struct pointer
// Use struct pointers as structs.
book2.pages = book1.pages
}
Most struct types are comparable types, except the ones who have fields of uncomparable types.
Two struct values are comparable only if they can be assigned to each other and their types are both comparable. In other words, two struct values can be compared with each other only if the (comparable) types of the two struct values have the identical underlying type (considering field tags) and at least one of the two types is non-defined.
When comparing two struct values of the same type, each pair of their corresponding fields will be compared. The two struct values are equal only if all of their corresponding fields are equal.
Values of two struct types S1
and S2
can be converted
to each other's types, if S1
and S2
share
the identical underlying type (by ignoring field tags).
In particular if either S1
or S2
is a
non-defined type
and their underlying types are identical (considering field tags),
then the conversions between the values of them can be implicit.
S0
, S1
, S2
,
S3
and S4
in the following code snippet,
S0
can't be converted to
the other four types, and vice versa,
for the corresponding field names are different.
S1
,
S2
, S3
and S4
can be converted to each other's type.
S2
can be implicitly converted
to type S3
, and vice versa.
S2
can be implicitly converted
to type S4
, and vice versa.
S1
must be explicitly converted
to type S2
, and vice versa.
S3
must be explicitly converted
to type S4
, and vice versa.
package main
type S0 struct {
y int "foo"
x bool
}
// S1 is an alias of a non-defined type.
type S1 = struct {
x int "foo"
y bool
}
// S2 is also an alias of a non-defined type.
type S2 = struct {
x int "bar"
y bool
}
// If field tags are ignored, the underlying types of
// S3(S4) and S1 are same. If field tags are considered,
// the underlying types of S3(S4) and S1 are different.
type S3 S2 // S3 is a defined type
type S4 S3 // S4 is a defined type
var v0, v1, v2, v3, v4 = S0{}, S1{}, S2{}, S3{}, S4{}
func f() {
v1 = S1(v2); v2 = S2(v1)
v1 = S1(v3); v3 = S3(v1)
v1 = S1(v4); v4 = S4(v1)
v2 = v3; v3 = v2 // the conversions can be implicit
v2 = v4; v4 = v2 // the conversions can be implicit
v3 = S3(v4); v4 = S4(v3)
}
In fact, two struct values can be assigned (or compared) to each other only if one of them can implicitly converted to the type of the other.
Anonymous struct types are allowed to be used as the types of the fields of another struct type. Anonymous struct type literals are also allowed to be used in composite literals.
An example:var aBook = struct {
// The type of the author field is
// an anonymous struct type.
author struct {
firstName, lastName string
gender bool
}
title string
pages int
}{
author: struct { // an anonymous struct type
firstName, lastName string
gender bool
}{
firstName: "Mark",
lastName: "Twain",
},
title: "The Million Pound Note",
pages: 96,
}
Generally, for better readability, it is not recommended to use anonymous struct type literals in composite literals.
There are some advanced topics which are related to struct types. They will be explained in type embedding and memory layouts later.