Is there a way to write generic code to find out whether a slice contains specific element in Go?

Question

I want to know is there a generic way to write code to judge whether a slice contains an element, I find it will frequently useful since there is a lot of logic to fist judg

Answer 1

You can do it with reflect, but it will be MUCH SLOWER than a non-generic equivalent function:

func Contains(slice, elem interface{}) bool {

    sv := reflect.ValueOf(slice)

    // Check that slice is actually a slice/array. 
    // you might want to return an error here
    if sv.Kind() != reflect.Slice && sv.Kind() != reflect.Array {
        return false
    }

    // iterate the slice
    for i := 0; i < sv.Len(); i++ {

        // compare elem to the current slice element
        if elem == sv.Index(i).Interface() {
            return true
        }
    }

    // nothing found
    return false


}

func main(){
    si := []int {3, 4, 5, 10, 11}
    ss := []string {"hello", "world", "foo", "bar"}

    fmt.Println(Contains(si, 3))
    fmt.Println(Contains(si, 100))
    fmt.Println(Contains(ss, "hello"))
    fmt.Println(Contains(ss, "baz"))

}

How much slower? about x50-x60 slower: Benchmarking against a non generic function of the form:

func ContainsNonGeneic(slice []int, elem int) bool {
    for _, i := range slice {
        if i == elem {
            return true
        }
    }
    return false
}

I'm getting:

• Generic: N=100000, running time: 73.023214ms 730.23214 ns/op
• Non Generic: N=100000, running time: 1.315262ms 13.15262 ns/op