First class functions in Go

Today, I played with functions as objects in the Go programming language. If functions are first class citizens in Go then it must be possible to store them in fields of a struct, pass them as arguments to other functions and use them as return values of other functions.

So I visited play.golang.org for putting together a simple program that demonstrates this.

	package main

	import "fmt"

	func CallWith(f func(string), who string) {
		f(who)
	}

	type FunctionHolder struct {
		Function func(string)
	}

	func main() {
		holder := FunctionHolder{ func(who string) { fmt.Println("Hello,", who) }}
		CallWith(holder.Function,"ernest")
	}

• The CallWith function takes a one string parameter function f and a string parameter who. The body of the CallWith function evaluates the function parameter with the string parameter.
• The FunctionHolder is a struct type with a field called Function which must be a function with a string parameter.
• In the main function, a FunctionHolder is created initializing the Function field with a function that prints an Hello message.
• Next in the main function, the CallWith function is called with the Function value of the holder and a string value.

On play.golang.org can run this program yourself