How does Go do string comparison?

http://golang.org/ref/spec#Comparison_operators

Go supports string comparison without any special functions. Does the Go runtime do work behind the scenes to make comparisons of string literals?

As you can see in the following assembly dump, string comparison is delegated to a runtime.eqstring function from the runtime (line 17) after a short circuit check to see if the two operands are the same in-memory string (line 11):

$ cat foo.go
package main

func main() {
        a := "hello"
        b := "world"
        _ = a == b
}

$ go tool 6g -S foo.go
--- prog list "main" ---
0000 (foo.go:3) TEXT    main+0(SB),$40-0
0001 (foo.go:3) LOCALS  ,$0
0002 (foo.go:4) LEAQ    go.string."hello"+0(SB),BX
0003 (foo.go:4) MOVQ    (BX),SI
0004 (foo.go:4) MOVQ    8(BX),CX
0005 (foo.go:5) LEAQ    go.string."world"+0(SB),BX
0006 (foo.go:5) MOVQ    (BX),DX
0007 (foo.go:5) MOVQ    8(BX),AX
0008 (foo.go:6) JMP     ,11
0009 (foo.go:6) MOVQ    $1,AX
0010 (foo.go:6) JMP     ,23
0011 (foo.go:6) CMPQ    CX,AX
0012 (foo.go:6) JNE     ,22
0013 (foo.go:6) MOVQ    SI,(SP)
0014 (foo.go:6) MOVQ    CX,8(SP)
0015 (foo.go:6) MOVQ    DX,16(SP)
0016 (foo.go:6) MOVQ    AX,24(SP)
0017 (foo.go:6) CALL    ,runtime.eqstring+0(SB)
0018 (foo.go:6) MOVBQZX 32(SP),BX
0019 (foo.go:6) CMPB    BX,$0
0020 (foo.go:6) JEQ     ,22
0021 (foo.go:6) JMP     ,9
0022 (foo.go:6) MOVQ    $0,AX
0023 (foo.go:7) RET     ,

--- prog list "init" ---
0024 (foo.go:7) TEXT    init+0(SB),$0-0
0025 (foo.go:7) MOVBQZX initdone·+0(SB),AX
0026 (foo.go:7) LOCALS  ,$0
0027 (foo.go:7) CMPB    AX,$0
0028 (foo.go:7) JEQ     ,34
0029 (foo.go:7) CMPB    AX,$2
0030 (foo.go:7) JNE     ,32
0031 (foo.go:7) RET     ,
0032 (foo.go:7) CALL    ,runtime.throwinit+0(SB)
0033 (foo.go:7) UNDEF   ,
0034 (foo.go:7) MOVB    $2,initdone·+0(SB)
0035 (foo.go:7) RET     ,

Unless you are working on the compiler or runtime, this shouldn't concern you too much: just use the operators as the spec defines, and expect that the comparison to be O(n) with the length of the string.

runtime/string.goc (go1.3):

func eqstring(s1 String, s2 String) (v bool) {
	if(s1.len != s2.len) {
		v = false;
		return;
	}
	if(s1.str == s2.str) {
		v = true;
		return;
	}
	v = runtime·memeq(s1.str, s2.str, s1.len);
}

int32
runtime·strcmp(byte *s1, byte *s2)
{
	uintptr i;
	byte c1, c2;

	for(i=0;; i++) {
		c1 = s1[i];
		c2 = s2[i];
		if(c1 < c2)
			return -1;
		if(c1 > c2)
			return +1;
		if(c1 == 0)
			return 0;
	}
}

Note: The runtime· separator is a Unicode middle-dot, not a period.
[1]: https://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/src/pkg/runtime/string.goc