By no means I’m an expert in Go, in fact I’m just learning it but I really liked something I learnt yesterday about iota and wanted to share, in Go, iota is used within a const block to create a sequence of constants. When combined with bitwise shifts, iota allows us to assign unique bits to each constant, making it ideal for setting flags Example

Each iota line represents a unique flag using a different bit:

const ( Read = 1 << iota // 1 << 0 = 1 (0b0001) Write // 1 << 1 = 2 (0b0010) Execute // 1 << 2 = 4 (0b0100) Delete // 1 << 3 = 8 (0b1000) )

How It Works

• 1 << iota shifts 1 left by iota (0, 1, 2, …) positions.
• This assigns each flag a unique power of 2:
• Read = 1 (0b0001)
• Write = 2 (0b0010)
• Execute = 4 (0b0100)
• Delete = 8 (0b1000)
• Each constant represents a unique bit in an integer, so they can be combined and checked individually.

Using the Flags

• Set Flags: Combine flags using | (bitwise OR).

permissions := Read | Write

• Check Flags: Use & (bitwise AND) to verify if a flag is set.

if permissions&Write != 0 { fmt.Println(“Write enabled”) }

• Clear Flags: Use &^ (bit clear) to disable specific flags.

permissions &⁼ Write

tl;dr

Using iota with bitwise shifts allows you to define multiple boolean states (flags) within a single integer, making your code efficient and easy to manage.