How to Sort a Slice of Strings in Golang?

In Go, a slice is a flexible data structure that stores a variable-length sequence of elements of the same type. Unlike arrays, slices can dynamically grow and shrink. You cannot mix different types within a slice. Go provides built-in functions for sorting slices, particularly for strings, found in the sort package, which must be imported in your program

Example:

package main 

import ( 
    "fmt"
    "sort"
) 

// Initializing a slice of strings
var s = []string{"a", "c", "b", "e", "d"}

Syntax

func Strings(scl []string)                                                      #Sorting a Slice of Strings
func StringsAreSorted(scl []string) bool                           #Checking if a Slice of Strings is Sorted

Sorting a Slice of Strings

You can sort a slice of strings in increasing order using the sort.Strings function.

Syntax

func Strings(scl []string)

Example

package main 
import ( 
    "fmt"
    "sort"
) 

var s = []string{"a", "c", "b", "e", "d"}

func main() { 
    
    fmt.Println("Slice (Before):", s) 

    // Sorting the slice of strings 
    sort.Strings(s) 
    
    fmt.Println("Slice (After):", s) 
}

Slice (Before): [a c b e d]
Slice (After): [a b c d e]

Checking if a Slice of Strings is Sorted

You can check whether a given slice of strings is sorted using the sort.StringsAreSorted function.

Syntax

func StringsAreSorted(scl []string) bool

Example

package main 
import ( 
    "fmt"
    "sort"
) 

var s = []string{"a", "c", "b", "e", "d"}

func main() { 
    fmt.Println("Slice:", s) 

    // Checking if the slice is sorted
    res := sort.StringsAreSorted(s) 

    // Displaying the result 
    fmt.Println(res) 
}

Output

Slice: [a c b e d]
false

In Go, sorting a slice of strings can be easily accomplished using the sort.Strings function, while you can check if the slice is sorted using sort.StringsAreSorted. These built-in functions make it simple to manage and verify string slices in your programs.