Oops! Yesterday I live-streamed… to the wrong link! If you followed the link I shared yesterday, you were probably confused. But the good news is, you can still catch the replay.

Method declarations

…

For a base type, the non-blank names of methods bound to it must be unique. If the base type is a struct type, the non-blank method and field names must be distinct.

These uniqueness rules are quite predictible! But let’s go over it to be complete, anyway.

type X int

func (X) Foo() {}

func (x *X) Foo() {} // Invalid; Foo is already defined as a method on this type

Or in the case of a struct:

type Person struct {
	Name string
}

func (p *Person) Name() string { // Invalid. Name cannot be a field and a method
	return p.Name
}

The spec continues with an example, which we’ll get out of the way today so that tomorrow we can talk about generics as they relate to methods.

Given defined type Point the declarations

func (p *Point) Length() float64 {
	return math.Sqrt(p.x * p.x + p.y * p.y)
}

func (p *Point) Scale(factor float64) {
	p.x *= factor
	p.y *= factor
}

bind the methods Length and Scale, with receiver type *Point, to the base type Point.

Quotes from The Go Programming Language Specification Version of August 2, 2023