How to test the equivalence of maps in Golang?

Question

I have a table-driven test case like this one:

func CountWords(s string) map[string]int

func TestCountWords(t *testing.T) {
  var tests = []struct {
    input string
    want map[string]int
  }{
    {"foo", map[string]int{"foo":1}},
    {"foo bar foo", map[string]int{"foo":2,"bar":1}},
  }
  for i, c := range tests {
    got := CountWords(c.input)
    // TODO test whether c.want == got
  }
}

I could check whether the lengths are the same and write a loop that checks if every key-value pair is the same. But then I have to write this check again when I want to use it for another type of map (say map[string]string).

What I ended up doing is, I converted the maps to strings and compared the strings:

func checkAsStrings(a,b interface{}) bool {
  return fmt.Sprintf("%v", a) != fmt.Sprintf("%v", b) 
}

//...
if checkAsStrings(got, c.want) {
  t.Errorf("Case #%v: Wanted: %v, got: %v", i, c.want, got)
}

This assumes that the string representations of equivalent maps are the same, which seems to be true in this case (if the keys are the same then they hash to the same value, so their orders will be the same). Is there a better way to do this? What is the idiomatic way to compare two maps in table-driven tests?

Answer 1

The Go library has already got you covered. Do this:

import "reflect"
// m1 and m2 are the maps we want to compare
eq := reflect.DeepEqual(m1, m2)
if eq {
    fmt.Println("They're equal.")
} else {
    fmt.Println("They're unequal.")
}

If you look at the source code for reflect.DeepEqual's Map case, you'll see that it first checks if both maps are nil, then it checks if they have the same length before finally checking to see if they have the same set of (key, value) pairs.

Because reflect.DeepEqual takes an interface type, it will work on any valid map (map[string]bool, map[struct{}]interface{}, etc). Note that it will also work on non-map values, so be careful that what you're passing to it are really two maps. If you pass it two integers, it will happily tell you whether they are equal.