What Does `type PublicKey []byte` Declare in Go?

Understanding Type Declarations in Go

Learning Go from a .NET background, one may encounter unfamiliar type declarations. Consider this code snippet:

// PublicKey is the type of Ed25519 public keys.
type PublicKey []byte

What does this declaration signify?

Contrary to inheritance, Go employs type definitions to create new types with shared underlying types. Defining a type like this allows developers to:

• Utilize a custom identifier to enhance code readability.
• Define methods specific to the new type.

While both new types and functions can be utilized for type-specific operations, only types with methods can implement interfaces, such as the sort.Interface used for sorting values.

Hence, the above declaration creates a custom type, PublicKey, with an underlying type of []byte, enabling methods to be attached to it. For example, a sort.IntSlice type is defined for sorting integer slices, allowing for sorting of values of type []int.

Key Differences from Inheritance

Unlike inheritance, creating new types in Go does not inherit methods or have a parent-child relationship. To achieve similar functionality, embedding (struct types) should be considered, where an embedded type's methods become available to the embedding type.

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