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how are people storing Arns from StringOutput in a struct?

oh, you mean like this:

```type MyStruct struct {
  Arns pulumi.StringOutputArray
}```

<@UCWG26BH7> ok, so that should fix this `Cannot use 'role.Arn' (type pulumi.StringOutput) as the type pulumi.String ?`

hmm maybe, what’s throwing that error for you?

this function
```func (f *flowLog) CreateIAMRole(name string) *flowLog {
	role, err := iam.NewRole(f.vpcSetupCreateHelper.ctx, name, &amp;iam.RoleArgs{
		AssumeRolePolicy: pulumi.Any(fmt.Sprintf(`{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "<http://vpc-flow-logs.amazonaws.com|vpc-flow-logs.amazonaws.com>"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}
`)),
	})
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	f.IamRoleName = role.Arn
	return f
}```

struct is such
```type flowLog struct {
	Name           String
	CloudwatchArgs cloudwatch.LogGroupArgs
	FlowlogArgs    ec2.FlowLogArgs
	IamRoleName    pulumi.String
	GroupName      pulumi.String
	TrafficType    String
	UseS3          bool
	S3BucketName   String

	vpcSetupCreateHelper *vpcSetupCreateHelper
	provider             pulumi.ProviderResource
}```


I think this needs to be
```IamRoleName    pulumi.StringOutput```

yeah that seems to fix it, one would think that .Arn would return a pulumi.String

the StringOutput/StringInput types implement pulumi.String, so they’re better to use in situations like this

how can you print out a StringOutput with out using a ApplyT to All call?

yeah, I know thats the one of the most annoying things about pulumi and most cloud libraries, doing the retype of `string` into their own string type.

just use a string as a string :slightly_smiling_face:

it would be interesting to know the design reason why people do this all the time

it’s because Go doesn’t have generics (yet), so it can’t represent any future values

it does and has since 1.18 its called a interface :slightly_smiling_face:

yeah sorry, let me rephrase: Generic weren’t introduced when we wrote the SDK

there is a roadmap item to rewrite with it

in any case, a Go “string” is known at runtime. Any value that is returned from the API isn’t known at runtime, so it’s not really possible to “use a string as a string”

&lt;strike&gt;ok that makes sense so is the go sdk based off 1.14 or 1.15?&lt;/strike&gt;

So does this output method issue exist in python or any other language ? wondering if this StringOutput thing is a golang issue

we wrote the SDK at 1.16 (i think). you can track the generics implementation here: <https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi/issues/9143>

the “outputty” types all exist in the other languages yeah, but implementation wise it’s a little easier sometimes