"Map lookup requires an equality operator, which slices do not implement. They don't implement equality because equality is not well defined on such types; there are multiple considerations involving shallow vs. deep comparison, pointer vs. value comparison, how to deal with recursive types, and so on. We may revisit this issue—and implementing equality for slices will not invalidate any existing programs—but without a clear idea of what equality of slices should mean, it was simpler to leave it out for now.
In Go 1, unlike prior releases, equality is defined for structs and arrays, so such types can be used as map keys. Slices still do not have a definition of equality, though."
