Interface types

An interface type specifies a method set called its interface. A variable of interface type can store a value of any type with a method set that is any superset of the interface. Such a type is said to implement the interface. The value of an uninitialized variable of interface type is nil.

InterfaceType      = "interface" "{" { MethodSpec ";" } "}" .
MethodSpec         = MethodName Signature | InterfaceTypeName .
MethodName         = identifier .
InterfaceTypeName  = TypeName .

As with all method sets, in an interface type, each method must have a unique non-blank name.

// A simple File interface
interface {
    Read(b Buffer) bool
    Write(b Buffer) bool
    Close()
}

More than one type may implement an interface. For instance, if two types S1 and S2 have the method set

func (p T) Read(b Buffer) bool { return … }
func (p T) Write(b Buffer) bool { return … }
func (p T) Close() { … }

(where T stands for either S1 or S2) then the File interface is implemented by both S1 and S2, regardless of what other methods S1 and S2 may have or share.

A type implements any interface comprising any subset of its methods and may therefore implement several distinct interfaces. For instance, all types implement the empty interface:

interface{}

Similarly, consider this interface specification, which appears within a type declaration to define an interface called Locker:

type Locker interface {
    Lock()
    Unlock()
}

If S1 and S2 also implement

func (p T) Lock() { … }
func (p T) Unlock() { … }

they implement the Locker interface as well as the File interface.

An interface T may use a (possibly qualified) interface type name E in place of a method specification. This is called embedding interface E in T; it adds all (exported and non-exported) methods of E to the interface T.

type ReadWriter interface {
    Read(b Buffer) bool
    Write(b Buffer) bool
}

type File interface {
    ReadWriter  // same as adding the methods of ReadWriter
    Locker      // same as adding the methods of Locker
    Close()
}

type LockedFile interface {
    Locker
    File        // illegal: Lock, Unlock not unique
    Lock()      // illegal: Lock not unique
}

An interface type T may not embed itself or any interface type that embeds T, recursively.

// illegal: Bad cannot embed itself
type Bad interface {
    Bad
}

// illegal: Bad1 cannot embed itself using Bad2
type Bad1 interface {
    Bad2
}
type Bad2 interface {
    Bad1
}