Compile-Time Enum in Go

Unlike other languages, Go does not support enum. However, it is pretty straightforward to create something that behaves similar to enum. There are a lot of articles on the internet on how to create an enum in Go, which pretty much looks like below.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
)

type myType string

const (
    Foo myType = "foo"
    Bar myType = "bar"
)

func doSomething(t myType) {
    fmt.Println(t)
}

func main() {
    // baz := "baz"
    // This will result in compilation error:
    // "cannot use baz (type string) as type myType in argument to doSomething"
    // doSomething(baz)

    // However, this is allowed.
    doSomething("baz")
}

As you can see in the code above, calling doSomething("baz") does not result in a compilation error. To fix that, we can change the code to look like below.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
)

type myType string

const (
    Foo myType = "foo"
    Bar myType = "bar"
)

func doSomething(t *myType) {
    fmt.Println(*t)
}

func main() {
    // This will now result in a compilation error.
    // doSomething("baz")

    baz := myType("baz")
    doSomething(&baz)
}