How do I represent an Optional String in Go?

Question

I wish to model a value which can have two possible forms: absent, or a string.

The natural way to do this is with Maybe String, or Optional

Answer 1

You could use something like sql.NullString, but I personally would stick to *string. As for awkwardness, it's true that you can't just sp := &"foo" unfortunately. But there is a workaround for this:

func strPtr(s string) *string {
    return &s
}

Calls to strPtr("foo") should be inlined, so it's effectively &"foo".

Another possibility is to use new:

sp := new(string)
*sp = "foo"