Sets Data Structure in Golang

Question

I really like google golang but could some one explain what the rationale is for the implementors having left out a basic data structure such as sets from the standard library?

Answer 1

One potential reason for this omission is that it's really easy to model sets with a map.

To be honest I think it's a bit of an oversight too, however looking at Perl, the story's exactly the same. In Perl you get lists and hashtables, in Go you get arrays, slices, and maps. In Perl you'd generally use a hashtable for any and all problems relating to a set, the same is applicable to Go.

Example

to imitate a set ints in Go, we define a map:

set := make(map[int]bool)

To add something is as easy as:

i := valueToAdd()
set[i] = true

Deleting something is just

delete(set, i)

And the potential awkwardness of this construct is easily abstracted away:

type IntSet struct {
    set map[int]bool
}

func (set *IntSet) Add(i int) bool {
    _, found := set.set[i]
    set.set[i] = true
    return !found   //False if it existed already
}

And delete and get can be defined similarly, I have the complete implementation here . The major disatvantage here is the fact that go doesn't have generics. However it is possible to do this with interface{} in which case you'd have cast the results of get.