A helper function to create a pointer to a new variable of a particular value in Go 1.18+.
strptr1 := new.Of("meaning of life")
strptr2 := new.Of("meaning of life")
strptr1 != strptr2 // true
*strptr1 == *strptr2 // true
intp1 := new.Of(42)
intp2 := new.Of(42)
intp1 != intp2 // true
*intp1 == *intp2 // true
type MyFloat float64
fp := new.Of[MyFloat](42)
fp != nil // true
*fp == 42 // true
As of November 2021, Go 1.18 is not released, but you can install Go tip with
$ go install golang.org/dl/gotip@latest
$ gotip download
$ gotip init me/myproject
$ gotip get github.com/carlmjohnson/new
I mean, honestly, this isn't even my worst idea for generics yet.
In Go, you cannot return a pointer to an expression, although you can return a pointer to a struct literal. As a result, return &struct{ 42 } is legal, but return &42 is not. To work around this, many popular packages include pointer helpers, such as aws.String and github.Int64. Thanks to generics, now one function can solve this problem once and for all.
new is a built-in function, not a keyword, so it is legal to shadow the name. If this is a problem for your code because you are still using the built-in new function in legacy code, you can use an import alias for this package.
100%, baby.
Ideally, newof will become a built-in function in a future version of Go. Until then, this is fine.
