[simiones]

It depends on what you mean exactly by "emulating sum types" and "pattern matching them".

An example is rolling your own discriminated union:

  type Avariant struct {
    a int
  }
  type Bvariant struct {
    b string
  }
  type SumChoice int
  const (
    SumA SumChoice = 0
    SumB SumChoice = 1
  )
  type Sum struct {
    type SumChoice
    A *Avariant
    B *Bvariant
  }

  sumA := Sum{choice: SumA, A: &{a: 7} }
  sumB := Sum{choice: SumB, B: &{b: "abc"} }

  func foo (x Sum) {
    switch(x.choice) {
      case SumA: {
        fmt.Printf("Value is %d", x.A.a)
      }
      case SumB: {        
        fmt.Printf("Value is \"%s\"", x.B.b)
      }
    }
  }

As usual with Go, it's ugly and verbose and error prone, but it just about works.

The previous poster was probably thinking of something similar but using interface{} (equivalent to Object or void*) instead of Sum, and then pattern matching using an explicit type switch:

  func foo (x interface{}) {
    switch actual := x.(type) {
      case AVariant: {
        fmt.Printf("Value is %d", actual.a)
      }
      case BVariant: {        
        fmt.Printf("Value is \"%s\"", actual.b)
      }
    }
  }

This is slightly less risky and has less ceremony, but it's also less clear which types foo() supports based on its signature. Since Go has only structural subtyping [0] for interfaces, you would have to add more boilerplate to use a marker interface instead.

[0] In Go, a type implements an interface if it has functions that match (name and signature) the interface functions. The name of the interface is actually irrelevant: any two interfaces with the same functions are equal. So if you declare an interface MyInterface with no methods, it is perfectly equivalent to the built-in `interface{}`: any type implements this interface, and any function which takes a MyInterface value can be called with any type in the program.

[kaoD]

Thanks for the write up effort.

On the first approach, with "error prone" you mean the tag could be incorrect, right? (or even have an impossible variant with 0 or multiple variants set).

[simiones]

Yup. Also, there is no exhaustiveness checking (the constants we chose to define for SumChoice(0) and SumChoice(1) mean nothing to the compiler anyway - exhaustiveness checking would have you test any possible int, since SumChoice is simply an alias for int).

[BenFrantzDale]

But are those two variants held in memory inside Sum or are they heap-allocated sitting out on some other cache line? Can one write a performant Sum type?

[simiones]

With pointers, they are in the heap, but at least there is no overhead. You could also declare them embedded (without the *s), but then the Sum struct would have a size that is a sum of all the variants' sizes, instead of a proper union which should have the max size (more or less).

  type Sum struct {
    type SumChoice
    A Avariant
    B Bvariant
  }

This is what I meant by saying that it depends on exactly what you mean by "sum types".

[BenFrantzDale]

Got it. Although I’m not sure what “no overhead” means if the instances have to live way far away on the heap. That means you’ve got an alloc (including a mutex lock), then the value lives far away, then the garbage-collection overhead then the delete. When I think sum-type I think a flag plus storage for the maximum size and alignment type, and all of the above bookkeeping and cache misses go away.

[simiones]

Yes, you're right - I was thinking of "no space overhead", and even that is not entirely correct (you pay an extra pointer per variant size, which in this case would be some overhead over the embedded version).

Still, I think most people don't worry so much about efficient packing of sum types, and instead the safety and convenience factors are more important. Of course, YMMV based on exact usage.

I'm not in anyway claiming that Go supports sum types. Someone just asked how they may be emulated, and I don't think it should be surprising that emulation has an overhead.