Deep Copying Data Structures in Go: Understanding Limitations and Alternatives

Deep copying a data structure involves creating an exact replica of the original with no shared references. While some programming languages provide built-in deep copy functionality, Go does not.

In your case, you have encountered difficulties using a third-party library (gods) to perform deep copy on hash sets. Unfortunately, Go's reflection mechanism allows only for reading unexported fields, not setting them. This limitation extends to other libraries as well.

Alternative Approaches

Since a built-in deep copy solution is unavailable, consider the following alternatives:

• Field-by-field Copying: Manually iterate through the data structure's fields and copy each one to a new instance.
• Struct Assignment Copying: Create a new struct instance and assign the original struct's fields to it. This technique copies both exported and unexported fields.
• Reflection-Based Copying: Use the reflect package to introspect the original data structure and create a new one with the same set of fields and data.

Unsafe Copying

Avoid using the unsafe package for deep copying. While it allows direct memory access, including unexported fields, it is considered unsafe and may cause unexpected behavior in future Go releases or across different platforms.

Package-Specific Support

The best option for deep copying data structures is to use libraries or frameworks that explicitly support this functionality. Look for packages that provide deep copy implementations for commonly used data structures.

Note: It is important to remember that deep copying can be a computationally expensive operation, particularly for large and complex data structures. Therefore, consider performance implications before implementing this technique.