The Go Programming Language

7.3 Interface Satisfaction

A type satisfies an interface if it possesses all the methods the interface requires. For example, an *os.File satisfies io.Reader, Writer, Closer, and ReadWriter. A *bytes.Buffer satisfies Reader, Writer, and ReadWriter, but does not satisfy Closer because it does not have a Close method. As a shorthand, Go programmers often say that a concrete type “is a” particular interface type, meaning that it satisfies the interface. For example, a *bytes.Buffer is an io.Writer; an *os.File is an io.ReadWriter.

The assignability rule (§2.4.2) for interfaces is very simple: an expression may be assigned to an interface only if its type satisfies the interface. So:

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var w io.Writer w = os.Stdout ...