ERerik_seaberg·Aug 12, 2024
https://github.com/deckarep/golang-set offers a thread safety option and methods like contains all, intersect, and equal.
In Go is my hammer, and everything is a naildeckarep
golang-set
Go2013–2024
deckarep / golang-set
golang-set
A simple, battle-tested and generic set type for the Go language. Trusted by GoogleCloudPlatform, Docker, 1Password, Ethereum and Hashicorp.
6Distinct people
6Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
4.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A simple, battle-tested and generic set type for the Go language. Trusted by GoogleCloudPlatform, Docker, 1Password, Ethereum and Hashicorp.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year6 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2013-07-23 20:58:48 UTC to 2024-08-12 22:25:11 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
6 sourcesWell, yes, name "Add" was a bad idea - collection management in particular tends to use free functions somewhat more - starting from the built-in `append`, hah. Although even that is not universal - consider e.g. github.com/deckarep/golang-set, which I believe is one of most popular set packages, based on number of imports. It doesn't strike me as non-idiomatic), it's all methods there and not free functions.
And either way, I'd disagree on the general principle. I'm not claiming to be well-versed in Go styles and patterns, but most well-designed libraries I've seen had exposed `foopkg.NewFoo()`, useful structs and constants (e.g. `foopkg.FooParams` or `foopkg.NoSuchFoo`) and the rest is typically interface methods.
In Go generics are not badIt depends on the level of abstraction you're addressing. One level may be "i need to store things with a quick search function", another may be "i need a storage of ordered names and expiry date for things", etc until you get to "I need a binary tree which orders by comparable types".
Where you split that process as a separate library you either decide to write or reuse - that becomes the problem to solve. A set implementation may be a problem to solve: https://github.com/deckarep/golang-set A btree may be a problem to solve: https://gitlab.com/cznic/b/-/tree/master/v2
In Go 1.18I would go a bit higher on the abstraction level - instead of using a hash I would use a Set. I see that Golang has at least one implementation:
https://github.com/deckarep/golang-set
If for some reason going "high level" is not an option, this:
> For trivial examples this works well, but for more complicated types with complex keys, it may require creating new types.
surprises me. Producing a small, unequivocal identifier for a value (be it using some kind of hash function, or just the raw memory address) seems like a very basic language feature. Doesn't the Go standard library have something similar to
func memory_address(o interface{}) int
or
func hash(o interface{}) string
?
If yes, then "complex keys" would not be needed: They would always be ints, strings, or whatever the aforementioned function returns.
In Removing Array DuplicatesA simple set type for the Go language
3 points · Open discussionAgreed. There is an awesome project that provides this: https://github.com/deckarep/golang-set
In Impressions of Go