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Advanced Go Coding — interface{}

Unleashing the Power of interface{}: Flexibility and Challenges in Go Programming

Stefanie Lai
5 min readJan 21, 2025

interface{}, known as “empty interface” and can represent values ​​of any type, is a unique and powerful tool in the Go world. As an important part of the Go type system, it lays the basis for generalized programming and dynamic type processing, and is widely used in JSON parsing, in heterogeneous data structures construction, and in general interface design.

However, as Go 1.18 opens the generics era, the role of interface{} needs to be repositioned. This is the main focus of this article, where we will explore the features and application scenarios of interface{}, and look into its applicability and limitations to find a right balance to ensure both flexibility and type safety.

What is interface{}

assign

Interface{} is the most general interface type in Go, containing no method sets so that it can be assigned with any type of value.

type interface{} interface{}

var anyValue interface{}
anyValue = 1 // int
anyValue = "Hello" // string
anyValue = struct{}{} // stru

Although it accepts values ​​of any type, it has an explicit memory structure in the underlying…

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Stefanie Lai
Stefanie Lai

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