[go] Pair/tuple data type in Go

While doing the final exercise of the Tour of Go, I decided I needed a queue of (string, int) pairs. That's easy enough:

type job struct {
    url string
    depth int
}

queue := make(chan job)
queue <- job{url, depth}

But this got me thinking: are there built-in pair/tuple data types in Go? There is support for returning multiple values from a function, but AFAICT, the multiple value tuples produced are not first-class citizens in Go's type system. Is that the case?

As for the "what have you tried" part, the obvious syntax (from a Python programmer's POV)

queue := make(chan (string, int))

didn't work.

You can do this. It looks more wordy than a tuple, but it's a big improvement because you get type checking.

Edit: Replaced snippet with complete working example, following Nick's suggestion. Playground link: http://play.golang.org/p/RNx_otTFpk

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    queue := make(chan struct {string; int})
    go sendPair(queue)
    pair := <-queue
    fmt.Println(pair.string, pair.int)
}

func sendPair(queue chan struct {string; int}) {
    queue <- struct {string; int}{"http:...", 3}
}

Anonymous structs and fields are fine for quick and dirty solutions like this. For all but the simplest cases though, you'd do better to define a named struct just like you did.

You could do something like this if you wanted

package main

import "fmt"

type Pair struct {
    a, b interface{}
}

func main() {
    p1 := Pair{"finished", 42}
    p2 := Pair{6.1, "hello"}
    fmt.Println("p1=", p1, "p2=", p2)
    fmt.Println("p1.b", p1.b)
    // But to use the values you'll need a type assertion
    s := p1.a.(string) + " now"
    fmt.Println("p1.a", s)
}

However I think what you have already is perfectly idiomatic and the struct describes your data perfectly which is a big advantage over using plain tuples.