Today, our final note on array types, and when recursion of types is, and is not, permitted:

Array types

…

An array type T may not have an element of type T, or of a type containing T as a component, directly or indirectly, if those containing types are only array or struct types.

// invalid array types
type (
	T1 [10]T1                 // element type of T1 is T1
	T2 [10]struct{ f T2 }     // T2 contains T2 as component of a struct
	T3 [10]T4                 // T3 contains T3 as component of a struct in T4
	T4 struct{ f T3 }         // T4 contains T4 as component of array T3 in a struct
)

// valid array types
type (
	T5 [10]*T5                // T5 contains T5 as component of a pointer
	T6 [10]func() T6          // T6 contains T6 as component of a function type
	T7 [10]struct{ f []T7 }   // T7 contains T7 as component of a slice in a struct
)

I think the explanation and provided examples are pretty clear. If you ever find yourself wanting this type of recursion, you’ll need to introduce some new intermediate type, such as an empty interface.

type T1 [10]any // Now the elements of T1 may be of type `T1` via the empty
                // interface. However, they can also be of any other type, so
                // probably not a great solution for most uses.

Quotes from The Go Programming Language Specification, Version of January 19, 2023