Can You Store Different Data Types in a Single Struct Field in Go?

Declaring and Using Struct Fields for Multiple Data Types in Go

In Go, you can define a struct to represent related data. However, what if you want a struct field to be able to store both string and int values?

To understand this issue better, consider the following struct:

type testCase struct {
   input   string
   isValid bool
}

This struct is designed to store a test case where input is a string and isValid is a boolean. In some scenarios, you may want to allow input to be either a string or an int.

Initially, you might consider converting the int input to a string and back to int while processing. However, this approach is inefficient and error-prone.

Another option could be defining two separate structs, such as testCaseInt and testCaseStruct. This would solve the problem, but it leads to unnecessary code duplication.

Is it possible to store different data types in a single struct field using an interface?

No, it's not possible in Go versions prior to 1.18. Go's type system does not support sum types, which are types that can represent multiple variants of data.

In Go 1.18, sum types will be supported through the introduction of generics. However, until then, there is no built-in way to achieve this functionality.

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