Yes, it's just []rune, which has just a bit of special sauce in the runtime that allows you to convert it directly to a string [1], and some functions that convert UTF-8 to and from it. However rune is a 32-bit number sufficient for storing a Unicode code point. Generally you're dealing in UTF-8 and prefer to just pass that through code. I think I've only ever use a []rune once, for when I was doing some very heavy-duty Unicode-aware code, and I still ended up refactoring it into using UTF-8 directly in the end.
[1]: https://play.golang.org/p/5DEzw85J5Ob Note this is a conversion; the string is UTF-8 and the runes are 32-bit ints, so this creates a new string.
[1]: https://play.golang.org/p/5DEzw85J5Ob Note this is a conversion; the string is UTF-8 and the runes are 32-bit ints, so this creates a new string.