How to determine an interface{} value's "real" type?

You also can do type switches:

switch v := myInterface.(type) {
case int:
    // v is an int here, so e.g. v + 1 is possible.
    fmt.Printf("Integer: %v", v)
case float64:
    // v is a float64 here, so e.g. v + 1.0 is possible.
    fmt.Printf("Float64: %v", v)
case string:
    // v is a string here, so e.g. v + " Yeah!" is possible.
    fmt.Printf("String: %v", v)
default:
    // And here I'm feeling dumb. ;)
    fmt.Printf("I don't know, ask stackoverflow.")
}

Your example does work. Here's a simplified version.

package main

import "fmt"

func weird(i int) interface{} {
    if i < 0 {
        return "negative"
    }
    return i
}

func main() {
    var i = 42
    if w, ok := weird(7).(int); ok {
        i += w
    }
    if w, ok := weird(-100).(int); ok {
        i += w
    }
    fmt.Println("i =", i)
}

Output:
i = 49

It uses Type assertions.

You can use reflection (reflect.TypeOf()) to get the type of something, and the value it gives (Type) has a string representation (String method) that you can print.