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Puzzle 25 Explanation: Go iota

Explore the use of Go's iota in const declarations to generate sequential bitwise flags. Understand how left shift operations create readable constants, and how bitmasks combine multiple flags efficiently. Gain practical knowledge to recognize and implement string representations for such constants.

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Try it yourself

Try executing the code below to see the result.

Go (1.16.5)
package main
import (
	"fmt"
)
const (
	Read = 1 << iota
	Write
	Execute
)
func main() {
	fmt.Println(Execute)
}

Explanation

In Go, iota is an enumerated type. It can be used inside a const declaration. For each constant in the same group, iota grows by one. If we specify an operation on iota— for ...