Custom length bit types in Go?

Question

In Go is it possible to define a custom type with a number of bits other than those offered by byte uint uint16 or any of the other built-in types?

I'm planning on using "just enough bits" to represent variables and wanted a 6-bit and a 4-bit type. Perhaps a composite bool type?

type fourbit struct{
    ones   bool
    twos   bool
    fours  bool
    eights bool
}

Though this sort of thing is quite messy and it would be nice to have a more general solution for n-bit types.

You might be looking for something like this; golang.org/pkg/encoding/binary you can store small values as a byte, not so sure about storing values that are one and a half bytes, you'll probably have to round up and put it in a 2byte buffer. — evanmcdonnal
– evanmcdonnal, Commented Oct 29, 2015 at 22:03
A more common pattern in most programming languages (and used throughout Go) is a bitmap to hold up to 8 values per byte: play.golang.org/p/DZj9FerK19 — Mr_Pink
– Mr_Pink, Commented Oct 30, 2015 at 13:49

peterSO · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-29 22:27:35Z

7

No. The minimum size of a Go type in current implementations, including type bool, is one byte, .

References:

answered Oct 29, 2015 at 22:27

peterSO

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1 Comment

basic addressable unit, interesting, very cool thanks for the quick reply.