Learning Go: Author: Thanks To

Learning Go
Go 1
Author: Miek Gieben
Thanks to: Go Authors, Google
With the help and contributions from: (in alphabetical order) Andrey Mirtchovski, Anthony Magro, Babu Sreekanth, Ben Bullock, Bob Cunningham, Brian Fallik, Cecil New, Damian Gryski, Dan Kortschak, Filip Zaludek, Haiping Fan, Jaap Akkerhuis, JC van Winkel, Jeroen Bulten, Jinpu Hu, Jonathan Kans, Makoto Inoue, Mayuresh Kathe, Michael Stapelberg, Mike Spook, Paulo Pinto, Russel Winder, Sonia Keys, Stefan Schroeder, Thomas Kapplet, Uriel.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Miek Gieben 2010 - 2012
This work is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. All example code used in this book is hereby put in the public domain.
Learning Go has been translated into: Chinese, by Mike Spook: Russian, by :
Learning as we Go (1.0)
Supports the Go 1 release
Contents
1 Introduction
1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 3 4 4 5 6 7 7 8 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Official documentation
Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Getting Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Getting Go for Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2 Basics
Hello World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Compiling and running code Settings used in this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Variables, types and keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Operators and built-in functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Go keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Control structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Built-in functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Arrays, slices and maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3 Functions
30
Scope
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Multiple return values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Named result parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Deferred code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Variadic parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Functions as values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Callbacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Panic and recovering
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4 Packages
48 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Documenting packages Testing packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Useful packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

5 Beyond the basics
58
Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Defining your own types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
ii
Chapter: Contents
Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
6 Interfaces
Methods . . . . . Interface names . A sorting example Exercises . . . . . Answers . . . . .

7 Concurrency
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82 More on channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 90 90 91 92 92 93 97
Communication
Files and directories . . . Command line arguments Executing commands . . Networking . . . . . . . Exercises . . . . . . . . . Answers . . . . . . . . .
A Colophon
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106 Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 License and copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 108 110
B C
Index Bibliography
List of Figures
1.1 2.1 3.1 6.1 Chronology of Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Array versus slice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 A simple LIFO stack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Peeling away the layers using reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
List of Code Examples

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Hello world . . . . . . . . . . Declaration with = . . . . . . Declaration with := . . . . . . Familiar types are still distinct Arrays and slices . . . . . . . Simple for loop . . . . . . . . For loop with an array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . 8 . 8 . 9 . 21 . 25 . 25
List of Code Examples
iii
2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17 3.18 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 8.1
Fizz-Buzz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Runes in strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reverse a string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A function declaration . . . . . . . . . . . . . Recursive function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Local scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Global scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scope when calling functions from functions . . Without defer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . With defer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Function literal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Function literal with parameters . . . . . . . . Access return values within defer . . . . . . . Anonymous function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Functions as values in maps . . . . . . . . . . Average function in Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . stack.String() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A function with variable number of arguments Fibonacci function in Go . . . . . . . . . . . . A Map function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bubble sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A small package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Use of the even package . . . . . . . . . . . . Test file for even package . . . . . . . . . . . . Stack in a package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Push/Pop test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A (rpn) calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Use of a pointer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dereferencing a pointer . . . . . . . . . . . . Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A generic map function in Go . . . . . . . . . . A cat program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Defining a struct and methods on it . . . . . . A function with an empty interface argument . Failing to implement an interface . . . . . . . Failure extending built-in types . . . . . . . . . Failure extending non-local types . . . . . . . . Introspection using reflection . . . . . . . . . Reflection and the type and value . . . . . . . Reflect with private member . . . . . . . . . . Reflect with public member . . . . . . . . . . Generic way of calculating a maximum . . . . Go routines in action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Go routines and a channel . . . . . . . . . . . Using select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Channels in Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adding an extra quit channel . . . . . . . . . . A Fibonacci function in Go . . . . . . . . . . . Reading from a file (unbuffered) . . . . . . . .
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26 27 27 28 30 31 31 31 32 34 35 35 35 36 36 37 41 43 43 44 44 46 48 48 52 55 55 56 58 58 61 67 68 70 72 72 73 73 76 77 78 78 79 82 83 84 87 87 88 90
iv
Chapter: Contents
8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.8 8.6 8.7 8.9 8.10 8.11
Reading from a file (bufferd) Create a directory in the shell Create a directory with Go . Processes in Perl . . . . . . uniq(1) in Perl . . . . . . . Processes in Go . . . . . . . wc(1) in Go . . . . . . . . . uniq(1) in Go . . . . . . . . A simple echo server . . . . Number cruncher . . . . . .
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90 91 91 94 95 97 98 99 99 100
List of Exercises
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 (1) Documentation . . . . . . . . (1) For-loop . . . . . . . . . . . . (1) FizzBuzz . . . . . . . . . . . . (1) Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . (4) Average . . . . . . . . . . . . (4) Average . . . . . . . . . . . . (3) Integer ordering . . . . . . . . (4) Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . (5) Stack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (5) Var args . . . . . . . . . . . . (5) Fibonacci . . . . . . . . . . . (4) Map function . . . . . . . . . (3) Minimum and maximum . . . (5) Bubble sort . . . . . . . . . . (6) Functions that return functions (2) Stack as package . . . . . . . . (7) Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . (4) Pointer arithmetic . . . . . . . (6) Map function with interfaces . (6) Pointers . . . . . . . . . . . . (6) Linked List . . . . . . . . . . (6) Cat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (8) Method calls . . . . . . . . . . (6) Interfaces and compilation . . (5) Pointers and reflection . . . . (7) Interfaces and max() . . . . . (4) Channels . . . . . . . . . . . (7) Fibonacci II . . . . . . . . . . (8) Processes . . . . . . . . . . . (5) Word and letter count . . . . . (4) Uniq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (9) Quine . . . . . . . . . . . . . (8) Echo server . . . . . . . . . . (9) Number cruncher . . . . . . . (8) *Finger daemon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 23 23 23 24 38 38 38 39 39 39 39 39 40 40 54 54 65 65 65 65 65 66 78 78 78 85 85 93 94 94 95 95 95 95
Preface
Is Go an object-oriented language? Yes and no. Frequently asked questions GO AUTHORS
Audience
This is an introduction to the Go language from Google. Its aim is to provide a guide to this new and innovative language. The intended audience of this book is people who are familiar with programming and know some programming languages, be it C[7], C++[29], Perl[9], Java[22], Erlang[8], Scala[23] or Haskell[1]. This is not a book which teaches you how to program, this is a book that just teaches you how to use Go. As with learning new things, probably the best way to do this is to discover it for yourself by creating your own programs. Each chapter therefore includes a number of exercises (and answers) to acquaint you with the language. An exercise is numbered as Qn, where n is a number. After the exercise number another number in parentheses displays the difficulty of this particular assignment. This difficulty ranges from 0 to 9, where 0 is easy and 9 is difficult. Then a short name is given, for easier reference. For example: Q1. (1) A map function introduces a question numbered Q1 of a level 1 difficulty, concerning a map()-function. The answers are included after the exercises on a new page. The numbering and setup of the answers is identical to the exercises, except that an answer starts with An, where the number n corresponds with the number of the exercise. Some exercises dont have an answer, they are marked with an asterisks.
Book layout
Chapter 1: Introduction A short introduction and history of Go. It tells how to get the source code of Go itself. It assumes a Unix-like environment, although Go should be fully usable on Windows. Chapter 2: Basics Tells about the basic types, variables and control structures available in the language. Chapter 3: Functions In the third chapter we look at functions, the basic building blocks of Go programs. Chapter 4: Packages In chapter 4 we see that functions and data can be grouped together in packages. You will also see how to document and test your packages.
Preface
vii
Chapter 5: Beyond the basics After that we look at creating your own types in chapter 5. It also looks at allocation in Go. Chapter 6: Interfaces Go does not support Object Orientation in the traditional sense. In Go the central concept is interfaces. Chapter 7: Concurrency With the go keyword functions can be started in separate routines (called goroutines). Communication with those goroutines is done via channels. Chapter 8: Communication In the last chapter we show how to interface with the rest of the world from within a Go program. How create files and read and wrote from and to them. We also briefly look into networking. I hope you will enjoy this book and the language Go.
Settings used in this book

Go itself is installed in /go ; Go source code we want to compile ourself is placed in /g/src and $GOPATH is set to GOPATH=/g .
Translations
The content of this book is freely available. This has already led to translations: Chinese, but Mike Spook: http://www.mikespook.com/learning-go/ Russian, Miek Gieben, 2011, 2012 [email protected]
Introduction
I am interested in this and hope to do something. On adding complex numbers to Go KEN THOMPSON
What is Go? From the website [18]: The Go programming language is an open source project to make programmers more productive. Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multi core and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. Its a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language. Go 1 is the first stable release of the language Go. This document and all exercises work with Go 1 if not, its a bug. The following convention is used throughout this book: Code is displayed in DejaVu Mono; Keywords are displayed in DejaVu Mono Bold; Comments are displayed in DejaVu Mono Italic; Extra remarks in the code
Are displayed like this;
. Longer remarks get a number 1 with the explanation following; Line numbers are printed on the right side; Shell examples use a % as prompt; User entered text in shell examples is in bold, system responses are in a typewriter font; An emphasized paragraph is indented and has a vertical bar on the left.
Official documentation
There already is a substantial amount of documentation written about Go. The Go Tutorial [17], and the Effective Go document [12]. The website http://golang.org/doc/ is a very good starting point for reading up on Goa . Reading these documents is certainly not required, but it is recommended. Go 1 comes with its own documentation in the form of two programs:
a
When the term
searching golang
on the internet use instead of plain go.
http://golang.org/doc/ itself is served by a Go program called godoc.
Chapter 1: Introduction
1. go doc, this one is used for the (third party)package documentation; 2. godoc, used for the official package documentation, i.e. all the stuff relating to Go 1. The difference between the two is most apparent we you look at the documentation for the built-ins (see Operators and built-in functions in the next chapter):
% go doc builtin % godoc builtin
35 lines 242 lines
Normally the difference between the two shouldnt matter, but just be aware that go doc and godoc arent identical. How to create your own package documentation is explained in chapter 4.
Origins
Go has it origins in Inferno [2] (which in turn was based upon Plan 9 [3]). Inferno included a language called Limbo [4]. Quoting from the Limbo paper: Limbo is a programming language intended for applications running distributed systems on small computers. It supports modular programming, strong type checking at compile- and run-time, inter process communication over typed channels, automatic garbage collection, and simple abstract data types. It is designed for safe execution even on small machines without hardware memory protection. A feature Go inherited from Limbo is channels (see chapter 7). Again from the Limbo documentation. [A channel] is a communication mechanism capable of sending and receiving objects of the specified type to another agent in the system. Channels may be used to communicate between local processes; using library procedures, they may be connected to named destinations. In either case send and receive operations may be directed to them. The channels in Go are easier to use than those in Limbo. If we dig even deeper in the history of Go we also find references to Newsqueak [26], which pioneered the use of channel communication in a Clike language. Channel communication isnt unique to these languages, a big nonClike language which also uses them is Erlang [8].
Figure 1.1. Chronology of Go
1986
1989
1995
2009
Erlang
Newsqueak Limbo
Go
The whole of idea of using channels to communicate with other processes is called Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) and was conceived by C. A. R. Hoare [25], who incidentally is the same man that invented QuickSort [24].
Getting Go
Go is the first Clike language that is widely available, runs on many different platforms and makes concurrency easy (or easier).
Getting Go
In this section we tell how to install Go locally on your machine, but you can also compile Go code online at http://play.golang.org/. To quickly play with code this is by far the easiest route. You can also get pre-compiled binaries from [19]. Ubuntu and Debian both have a Go package in their repositories, look for the package golang. But there are still some minor issues being worked out. For now we will stick to the installation from source. So we will have to retrieve the code from the mercurial archive and compile Go yourself. For other Unix-like systems the procedure is the same.
First install Mercurial (to get the hg command). In Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora you must install the mercurial package; For building Go you need the packages: bison, gcc, libc6-dev, ed, gawk and make; Set the environment variable GOROOT to the root of your Go install:
% export GOROOT=/go
Then retrieve the latest release (= Go 1) source code:

% hg clone -r release https://go.googlecode.com/hg/ $GOROOT
Set your PATH to so that the Shell can find the Go binaries:
% export PATH=$GOROOT/bin:$PATH
Compile Go
% cd $GOROOT/src % ./all.bash
If all goes well, you should see the following at the end:
--- cd ../test 0 known bugs; 0 unexpected bugs ALL TESTS PASSED --Installed Go for linux/amd64 in /home/go Installed commands in /home/go/bin
Chapter 1: Introduction
Getting Go for Windows

The best way is to follow the instructions from [19], which are repeated here for your convience. Download Go -1 from: http://code.google.com/p/go/downloads/list?q=OpSys-Windows+ Type%3DArchive; Unpack it to your C:\ drive; Make sure that the contents are C:\Go. Note: this directory should be created when you unpacked the zip; Add C:\Go\bin to your $PATH:
export PATH=C:\Go\bin
Exercises
Q1. (1) Documentation 1. Gos documentation can be read with the go doc program, which is included the Go distribution.
go doc hash gives information about the hash package:
% go doc hash PACKAGE package hash ... ... ... SUBDIRECTORIES adler32 crc32 crc64 fnv
With which go doc command can you read the documentation of fnv contained in hash?
Answers
Answers
A1. (1) Documentation 1. The package fnv is in a subdirectory of hash, so you will only need
go doc hash/fnv.
Specific functions inside the Go manual can also be accessed. For instance the function Printf is described in fmt, but to only view the documentation concerning this function use: godoc fmt Printf . All the built-in functions are also accesible by using godoc: godoc builtin.
Basics
In Go, the code does exactly what it says on the page. Go Nuts mailing list ANDREW GERRAND
There are a few things that make Go different from other languages. Clean and Simple Go strives to keep things small and beautiful, you should be able to do a lot in only a few lines of code; Concurrent Go makes it easy to fire off functions to be run as very lightweight threads. These threads are called goroutines a in Go; Channels Communication with these goroutines is done via channels [33, 25]; Fast Compilation is fast and execution is fast. The aim is to be as fast as C. Compilation time is measured in seconds; Safe Explicit casting and strict rules when converting one type to another. Go has garbage collection, no more free() in Go, the language takes care of this; Standard format A Go program can be formatted in (almost) any way the programmers want, but an official format exist. The rule is very simple: The output of the filter gofmt is the official endorsed format. Postfix types Types are given after the variable name, thus var a int, instead of int a; as one would in C; UTF-8
UTF-8 is everywhere, in strings and in the program code. Finally you can use = + 1 in your source code;
Open Source The Go license is completely open source, see the file LICENSE in the Go source code distribution; Fun Programming with Go should be fun!
a
Yes, that sounds a lot like coroutines, but goroutines are slightly different as we will see in chapter 7.
Hello World
Erlang [8] also shares some of the features of Go. Notable differences between Erlang and Go is that Erlang borders on being a functional language, where Go is an imperative one. And Erlang runs in a virtual machine, while Go is compiled. Go also has a much more Unix-like feeling to it.
Hello World
In the Go tutorial, Go is presented to the world in the typical manner: letting it print Hello World (Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie started this when they presented the C language in the nineteen seventies). We dont think we can do better, so here it is, Hello World in Go. Listing 2.1. Hello world . package main 0
import "fmt"
1
. // Implements formatted I/O. 1
. /* Print something */ 2 . func main() { 3 . 4

fmt.Printf("Hello, world; or }
5 6 7
; or
\n")
8 9
Lets look at the program line by line. . 0 This first line is just required. All Go files start with package <something>, package
main is required for a standalone executable;
. 1 This says we need fmt in addition to main. A package other than main is commonly called a library, a familiar concept of many programming languages (see chapter 4). The line ends with a comment which is started with //; . 2 This is also a comment, but this one is enclosed in /* and */; . 3 Just as package main was required to be first, import may come next. In Go, package is always first, then import, then everything else. When your Go program is executed, the first function called will be main.main(), which mimics the behavior from C. Here we declare that function; . 4 On line 8 we call a function from the package fmt to print a string to the screen. The string is enclosed with " and may contain non-ASCII characters. Here we use Greek and Japanese.
Compiling and running code

The preferred way to build a Go program, is to use a the go tool. To build helloworld we just give:
Chapter 2: Basics
% go build helloworld.go
This results in a executable called helloworld.

% ./helloworld
Hello, world; or
; or
Settings used in this book

Go itself is installed in /go ; Go source code we want to compile ourself is placed in /g/src and $GOPATH is set to GOPATH=/g . This variable comes into play when start using packages (chapter 4).
Variables, types and keywords

In the next sections we will look at variables, basic types, keywords and control structures of our new language. Go has a C-like feel when it comes to its syntax. If you want to put two (or more) statements on one line, they must be separated with a semicolon (;). Normally you dont need the semicolon. Go is different from other languages in that the type of a variable is specified after the variable name. So not: int a, but a int. When declaring a variable it is assigned the natural null value for the type. This means that after var a int, a has a value of 0. With var s string, s is assigned the zero string, which is "". Declaring and assigning in Go is a two step process, but they may be combined. Compare the following pieces of code which have the same effect. Listing 2.2. Declaration with =
var a int var b bool a = 15 b = false
Listing 2.3. Declaration with :=

a := 15 b := false
On the left we use the var keyword to declare a variable and then assign a value to it. The code on the right uses := to do this in one step (this form may only be used inside functions). In that case the variable type is deduced from the value. A value of 15 indicates an int, a value of false tells Go that the type should be bool. Multiple var declarations may also be grouped, const and import also allow this. Note the use of parentheses:
var ( x int b bool )
Multiple variables of the same type can also be declared on a single line: var x, y int, makes x and y both int variables. You can also make use of parallel assignment:
a, b := 20, 16
Which makes a and b both integer variables and assigns 20 to a and 16 to b. A special name for a variable is _ (underscore) . Any value assigned to it is discarded. In this example we only assign the integer value of 35 to b and discard the value 34.
_, b := 34, 35
Declared, but otherwise unused variables are a compiler error in Go. The following code generates this error: i declared and not used
package main func main() { var i int }
Boolean types A boolean type represents the set of boolean truth values denoted by the predeclared constants true and false. The boolean type is bool. Numerical types Go has the well known types such as int, this type has the appropriate length for your machine. Meaning that on a 32 bits machine they are 32 bits, and on a 64 bits machine they are 64 bits. Note: an int is either 32 or 64 bits, no other values are defined. Same goes for uint. If you want to be explicit about the length you can have that too with int32, or uint32. The full list for (signed and unsigned) integers is int8, int16, int32, int64 and byte, uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64. With byte being an alias for uint8. For floating point values there is float32 and float64 (there is no float type). A 64 bit integer or floating point value is always 64 bit, also on 32 bit architectures. Note however that these types are all distinct and assigning variables which mix these types is a compiler error, like in the following code: Listing 2.4. Familiar types are still distinct
package main func main() { var a int var b int32 a = 15 b = a + a b = b + 5 }
1
Generic 32 bits
integer type integer type
4 5 6
Illegal mixing of 5 is a (typeless)
these types constant, so this is OK
7 8 9
Gives the error on the assignment on line 7:

types.go:7: cannot use a + a (type int) as type int32 in assignment
The assigned values may be denoted using octal, hexadecimal or the scientific notation: 077, 0xFF, 1e3 or 6.022e23 are all valid.
10
Chapter 2: Basics
Constants Constants in Go are just that constant. They are created at compile time, and can only be numbers, strings or booleans; const x = 42 makes x a constant. You can use iota b to enumerate values.
const ( a = iota b = iota )
The first use of iota will yield 0, so a is equal to 0, whenever iota is used again on a new line its value is incremented with 1, so b has a value of 1. You can even do the following, let Go repeat the use of = iota:
const ( a = iota b )
Implicitly
b = iota
You may also explicitly type a constant, if you need that:

const ( a = 0 b string = "0" )
Is
an int now
Strings An important other built in type is string. Assigning a string is as simple as:
s := "Hello World!"
Strings in Go are a sequence of UTF-8 characters enclosed in double quotes (). If you use the single quote () you mean one character (encoded in UTF-8) which is not a string in Go. Once assigned to a variable the string can not be changed anymore: strings in Go are immutable. For people coming from C, the following is not legal in Go:
var s string = "hello" s[0] = 'c'
Change
first char. to 'c', this is an error
To do this in Go you will need the following:

s := "hello" c := []byte(s) c[0] = 'c' s2 := string(c)
. 0 . 1 . 2
. fmt.Printf("%s\n", s2) 3
b The word [iota] is used in a common English phrase, not one iota, meaning not the slightest difference, in reference to a phrase in the New Testament: until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law. [35]
11
. 0 Convert s to an array of bytes, see chapter 5 section Conversions on page 63; . 1 Change the first element of this array; . 2 Create a new string s2 with the alteration; . 3 print the string with fmt.Printf.
Multi-line strings Due to the insertion of semicolons (see [12] section Semicolons), you need to be careful with using multi line strings. If you write:
s := "Starting part" + "Ending part"
This is transformed into:

s := "Starting part"; + "Ending part";
Which is not valid syntax, you need to write:

s := "Starting part" + "Ending part"
Then Go will not insert the semicolons in the wrong places. Another way would be to use raw string literals by using back quotes: `:
s := `Starting part Ending part`
Be aware that in this last example s now also contains the newline. Unlike interpreted string literals a raw string literals value is composed of the uninterpreted characters between the quotes.
Runes
Rune is an alias for int.
Complex numbers
Go has native support for complex numbers. If you use them you need a variable of the type complex128 (64 bit imaginary part). If you want something smaller there is complex64 for a 32 bits imaginary part. Complex numbers are written as re + imi, where re is the real part, im is the imaginary part and i is the literal i ( 1). An example of using complex numbers:
var c complex64 = 5+5i;fmt.Printf("Value is: %v", c)
will print: (5+5i)
12
Chapter 2: Basics
Errors Any non-trivial program will have the need for error reporting sooner or later. Because of this Go has a builtin type specially for errors, called error.
Operators and built-in functions

Go supports the normal set of numerical operations, table 2.1 lists the current ones and their relative precedence. They all associate from left to right.
Table 2.1. Operator precedence Precedence Highest Operator(s)

* + == <&& / != % | ^ < <= > >= << >> & &^
Lowest
||
+ - * / and % all do what you would expect, & | ^ and &^ are bit operators for bitwise and,
bitwise or, bitwise xor and bit clear respectively. The && and || operators are logical and and logical or. Not listed in the table is the logical not: ! Although Go does not support operator overloading (or method overloading for that matter), some of the built-in operators are overloaded. For instance + can be used for integers, floats, complex numbers and strings (adding strings is concatenating them).
Go keywords
Table 2.2. Keywords in Go

break case chan const continue default defer else fallthrough for func go goto if import interface map package range return select struct switch type var
Table 2.2 lists all the keywords in Go. In the following paragraphs and chapters we will cover them. Some of these we have seen already. For var and const see section Variables, types and keywords on page 8; package and import are briefly touched upon in section Hello World. In chapter 4 they are documented in more detail.
Control structures
13
Others deserve more text and have their own chapter/section: func is used to declare functions and methods; return is used to return from functions, for both func and return see chapter 3 for the details; go is used for concurrency (chapter 7); select used to choose from different types of communication, see chapter 7; interface see chapter 6; struct is used for abstract data types, see chapter 5; type also see chapter 5.
Control structures
There are only a few control structures in Go c . For instance there is no do or while loop, only a for. There is a (flexible) switch statement and if and switch accept an optional initialization statement like that of for. There also is something called a type switch and a multiway communications multiplexer, select (see chapter 7). The syntax is different (from that in C): parentheses are not required and the body must always be bracedelimited. If-else In Go an if looks like this:
if x > 0 { return y } else { return x }
is mandatory
Mandatory braces encourage writing simple if statements on multiple lines. It is good style to do so anyway, especially when the body contains a control statement such as a return or break. Since if and switch accept an initialization statement, its common to see one used to set up a (local) variable.
if err := file.Chmod(0664); err != nil { log.Stderr(err) return err }
Scope
nil
is like C's NULL
of err is limited to if's body
You can use the logical operators (see table 2.1) as you would normally do:
c
This section is copied from [12].
14
Chapter 2: Basics
if true && true } if ! false {
println("true")
println("true") }
In the Go libraries, you will find that when an if statement doesnt flow into the next statement that is, the body ends in break, continue, goto, or return the unnecessary else is omitted.
f, err := os.Open(name, os.O_RDONLY, 0) if err != nil { return err } doSomething(f)
This is a example of a common situation where code must analyze a sequence of error possibilities. The code reads well if the successful flow of control runs down the page, eliminating error cases as they arise. Since error cases tend to end in return statements, the resulting code needs no else statements.
f, err := os.Open(name, os.O_RDONLY, 0) if err != nil { return err } d, err := f.Stat() if err != nil { return err } doSomething(f, d)
Syntax wise the following is illegal in Go:

if err != nil { return err }
Must
be on the same line as the if
See [12] section Semicolons for the deeper reasons behind this. Ending with if-then-else Note that if you end a function like this:
if err != nil { return err } else { return nil }
It will not compile. This is a bug in the Go compiler. See [21] for an extended problem description and hopefully a fix.
Control structures
15
Goto Go has a goto statement use it wisely. With goto you jump to a label which must be defined within the current function. For instance a loop in disguise:
func myfunc() { i := 0 Here: i++ goto Here }
First
println(i)
word on a line ending with a colon is a label
Jump
The name of the label is case sensitive. For The Go for loop has three forms, only one of which has semicolons.
for init; condition; post { } for condition { } for { }
Like Like
a C for
a while
Like a C for(;;) (endless loop)
Short declarations make it easy to declare the index variable right in the loop.
sum := 0 for i := 0; i < 10; i++ { sum += i }
Short
for sum = sum + i
ceases to exist after the loop
Finally, since Go has no comma operator and ++ and - - are statements not expressions, if you want to run multiple variables in a for you should use parallel assignment.
// Reverse a for i, j := 0, len(a)-1; i < j; i, j = i+1, j-1 { a[i], a[j] = a[j], a[i] }
Here
Parallel
assignment
too
Break and continue With break you can quit loops early. By itself, break breaks the current loop.
for i := 0; i < 10; i++ { if i > 5 { break } println(i) }
Stop
this loop, making it only print 0 to 5
16
Chapter 2: Basics
With loops within loops you can specify a label after break. Making the label identify which loop to stop:
J: for j := 0; j < 5; j++ { for i := 0; i < 10; i++ { if i > 5 { break J } println(i) } }
Now
it breaks the j-loop, not the i one
With continue you begin the next iteration of the loop, skipping any remaining code. In the same way as break, continue also accepts a label. The following loop prints 0 to 5.
for i := 0; i < 10; i++ { if i > 5 { continue } println(i) }
Skip
the rest of the remaining code in the loop
Range The keyword range can be used for loops. It can loop over slices, arrays, strings, maps and channels (see chapter 7). range is an iterator that, when called, returns a key-value pair from the thing it loops over. Depending on what that is, range returns different things. When looping over a slice or array range returns the index in the slice as the key and value belonging to that index. Consider this code:
list := []string{"a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f"} for k, v := range list {
. 0
. 1
. // do what you want with k and v 2

}
. 0 Create a slice (see Arrays, slices and maps on page 19)) of strings. . 1 Use range to loop over them.With each iteration range will return the index as int and the key as a string, starting with 0 and a. . 2 k will have the value 05, and v will loop through af. You can also use range on strings directly. Then it will break out the individual Unicode characters d and their start position, by parsing the UTF-8. The loop:
for pos, char := range "ax" { fmt.Printf("character '%c' starts at byte position %d\n", char, pos) }
d In the UTF-8 world characters are sometimes called runes. Mostly, when people talk about characters, they mean 8 bit characters. As UTF-8 characters may be up to 32 bits the word rune is used.
Control structures
17
prints
character 'a' starts at byte position 0 character '' starts at byte position 1 character 'x' starts at byte position 3
took 2 bytes
Switch Gos switch is very flexible. The expressions need not be constants or even integers, the cases are evaluated top to bottom until a match is found, and if the switch has no expression it switches on true. Its therefore possible and idiomatic to write an if-else-ifelse chain as a switch.
func unhex(c byte) byte { switch { case '0' <= c && c <= '9': return c - '0' case 'a' <= c && c <= 'f': return c - 'a' + 10 case 'A' <= c && c <= 'F': return c - 'A' + 10 } return 0 }
There is no automatic fall through, you can however use fallthrough to do just that. Without fallthrough:
switch i { case 0: case 1: f() } // f is not called when i == 0! // empty case body
And with:
switch i { case 0: case 1: f() } // f is called when i == 0! fallthrough
With default you can specify an action when none of the other cases match.
switch i { case 0: case 1: f() default: g() } // called when i is not 0 or 1
Cases can be presented in comma-separated lists.
18
Chapter 2: Basics
func shouldEscape(c byte) bool { switch c { case ' ', '?', '&', '=', '#', '+': return true } return false }
as "or"
Heres a comparison routine for byte arrays that uses two switch statements:
// Compare returns an integer comparing the two byte arrays // lexicographically. // The result will be 0 if a == b, -1 if a < b, and +1 if a > b func Compare(a, b []byte) int { for i := 0; i < len(a) && i < len(b); i++ { switch { case a[i] > b[i]: return 1 case a[i] < b[i]: return -1 } } // String are equal except for possible tail switch { case len(a) < len(b): return -1 case len(a) > len(b): return 1 } return 0 } // Strings are equal
Built-in functions
A small number of functions are predefined, meaning you dont have to include any package to get access to them. Table 2.3 lists them all.e
Table 2.3. Predefined functions in Go

close delete len cap new make append copy panic recover print println complex real imag
These built-in functions are documented in the builtin pseudo package that is included in recent Go releases.
e You can use the command go doc builtin to read the online documentation about the built-in types and functions.
Arrays, slices and maps
19
close
is used in channel communication. It closes a channels, see chapter 7 for more on
this.
delete
is used for deleting entries in maps.
are used on a number of different types, len is used for returning the length of strings and the length of slices and arrays. See section Arrays, slices and maps for the details of slices and arrays and the function cap.
len and cap
new
is used for allocating memory for user defined data types. See section Allocation with new on page 59.
is used for allocating memory for built-in types (maps, slices and channels). See section Allocation with make on page 59.
make
copy
is used for copying slices. append is for concatenating slices. See section Slices in this chapter.
panic and recover are used for an exception mechanism. See the section Panic and recovering on page 37 for more.
are low level printing functions that can be used without reverting to the fmt package. These are mainly used for debugging.
print and println
all deal with complex numbers. Other than the simple example we gave, we will not further explain complex numbers.
complex, real and imag

Storing multiple values in a list can be done by utilizing arrays, or their more flexible cousin: slices. A dictionary or hash type is also available, it is called a map in Go.
Arrays An array is defined by: [n]<type>, where n is the length of the array and <type> is the stuff you want to store. Assigning or indexing an element in the array is done with square brackets:
var arr [10]int arr[0] = 42 arr[1] = 13 fmt.Printf("The first element is %d\n", arr[0])
20
Chapter 2: Basics
Array types like var arr = [10]int have a fixed size. The size is part of the type. They cant grow, because then they would have a different type. Also arrays are values: Assigning one array to another copies all the elements. In particular, if you pass an array to a function, it will receive a copy of the array, not a pointer to it. To declare an array you can use the following: var a [3]int, to initialize it to something else than zero, use a composite literal: a := [3]int{1, 2, 3} and this can be shortened to a := [...]int{1, 2, 3}, where Go counts the elements automatically. Note that all fields must be specified. So if you are using multidimensional arrays you have to do quite some typing:
a := [2][2]int{ [2]int{1,2}, [2]int{3,4} }
A composite literal allows you to assign a value directly to an array, slice or map. See the section and literals Constructors composite
Which is the same as:

a := [2][2]int{ [...]int{1,2}, [...]int{3,4} }
on page 60 for more.
Go release 2010-1027 [16].
When declaring arrays you always have to type something in between the square brackets, either a number or three dots (...) when using a composite literal. Since release 2010-10-27 this syntax was further simplified. From the release notes: The syntax for arrays, slices, and maps of composite literals has been simplified. Within a composite literal of array, slice, or map type, elements that are themselves composite literals may elide the type if it is identical to the outer literals element type. This means our example can become:
a := [2][2]int{ {1,2}, {3,4} }
Slices
TODO Add push/pop to this section as container/vector will be deprecated. Reference types are created with make.
A slice is similar to an array, but it can grow when new elements are added. A slice always refers to an underlying array. What makes slices different from arrays is that a slice is a pointer to an array; slices are reference types, which means that if you assign one slice to another, both refer to the same underlying array. For instance, if a function takes a slice argument, changes it makes to the elements of the slice will be visible to the caller, analogous to passing a pointer to the underlying array. With:
sl := make([]int, 10)
you create a slice which can hold ten elements. Note that the underlying array isnt specified. A slice is always coupled to an array that has a fixed size. For slices we define a capacity and a length. Figure 2.1 depicts the following Go code. First we create an array of m elements of the type int: var array[m]int Next, we create a slice from this array: slice := array[0:n] And now we have: len(slice)== n ; cap(slice)== m ; len(array)== cap(array)== m .
21
Figure 2.1. Array versus slice
n-1 . . .
m-1
array
len == cap == m
n-1 . . . len == n
m-1
slice
cap == m
Given an array, or another slice, a new slice is created via a[I:J]. This creates a new slice which refers to the variable a, starts at index I, and ends before index J. It has length J - I.
// array[n:m], create a slice from array with elements n to m-1
. a := [...]int{1, 2, 3, 4, 5} 0 . s1 := a[2:4] 1 . s2 := a[1:5] 2

s3 := a[:] s4 := a[:4] s5 := s2[:]
. 3 . 4 . 5
. 0 Define an array with 5 elements, from index 0 to 4; . 1 Create a slice with the elements from index 2 to 3, this contains: 3, 4; . 2 Create a slice with the elements from index 1 to 4, contains: 2, 3, 4, 5; . 3 Create a slice with all the elements of the array in it. This is a shorthand for: a[0:len(a)]; . 4 Create a slice with the elements from index 0 to 3, this is thus short for: a[0:4], and yields: 1, 2, 3, 4; . 5 Create a slice from the slice s2, note that s5 still refers to the array a. In the code listed in 2.5 we dare to do the impossible on line 8 and try to allocate something beyond the capacity (maximum length of the underlying array) and we are greeted with a runtime error. Listing 2.5. Arrays and slices
package main func main() { var array [100]int slice := array[0:99] slice[98] = 'a' slice[99] = 'a' } // Create array, index from 0 to 99 // Create slice, index from 0 to 98 // OK // Error: "throw: index out of range"
1
3 4 5
7 8 9
22
Chapter 2: Basics
If you want to extend a slice, there are a couple of built-in functions that make life easier: append and copy. From [14]: The function append appends zero or more values x to a slice s and returns the resulting slice, with the same type as s. If the capacity of s is not large enough to fit the additional values, append allocates a new, sufficiently large slice that fits both the existing slice elements and the additional values. Thus, the returned slice may refer to a different underlying array.
s0 := []int{0, 0} s1 := append(s0, 2) s2 := append(s1, 3, 5, 7) s3 := append(s2, s0...)
. 0 . 1 . 2
. 0 append a single element, s1 == []int{0, 0, 2}; . 1 append multiple elements, s2 == []int{0, 0, 2, 3, 5, 7}; . 2 append a slice, s3 == []int{0, 0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 0, 0}. Note the three dots!
And The function copy copies slice elements from a source src to a destination dst and returns the number of elements copied. Source and destination may overlap. The number of arguments copied is the minimum of len(src) and len(dst).
var a = [...]int{0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7} var s = make([]int, 6) n1 := copy(s, a[0:]) n2 := copy(s, s[2:])
n1 n2
== 6, s == []int{0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5} == 4, s == []int{2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 5}
Maps
Many other languages have a similar type built-in, Perl has hashes, Python has its dictionaries and C++ also has maps (as part of the libraries) for instance. In Go we have the map type. A map can be thought of as an array indexed by strings (in its most simple form). In the following listing we define a map which converts from a string (month abbreviation) to an int the number of days in that month. The generic way to define a map is with:
map[<from type>]<to type> monthdays := map[string]int{ "Jan": 31, "Feb": 28, "Mar": 31, "Apr": 30, "May": 31, "Jun": 30, "Jul": 31, "Aug": 31, "Sep": 30, "Oct": 31, "Nov": 30, "Dec": 31, }
The
comma here is required
Exercises
23
Note to use make when only declaring a map: monthdays := make(map[string]int) For indexing (searching) in the map, we use square brackets. For example, suppose we want to print the number of days in December: fmt.Printf("%d\n", monthdays["Dec"]) If you are looping over an array, slice, string, or map a range clause will help you again, which returns the key and corresponding value with each invocation.
year := 0 for _, days := range monthdays { year += days } fmt.Printf("Numbers of days in a year: %d\n", year)
Key
is not used, hence _, days
Adding elements to the map would be done as:

monthdays["Undecim"] = 30 monthdays["Feb"] = 29
Add a month Overwrite entry
- for leap years
To test for existence , you would use the following[27]:

var value int var present bool value, present = monthdays["Jan"] v, ok := monthdays["Jan"]
If exist, present has Or better and more Go Hence, the "comma ok"
the value true like form
And finally you can remove elements from the map:

delete(monthdays, "Mar")
Deletes
"Mar", always rainy anyway
In general the syntax delete(m, x) will delete the map entry retrieved by the expression m[x].
Exercises
Q2. (1) For-loop 1. Create a simple loop with the for construct. Make it loop 10 times and print out the loop counter with the fmt package. 2. Rewrite the loop from 1. to use goto. The keyword for may not be used. 3. Rewrite the loop again so that it fills an array and then prints that array to the screen. Q3. (1) FizzBuzz 1. Solve this problem, called the Fizz-Buzz [31] problem: Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print Fizz instead of the number and for the multiples of five print Buzz. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print FizzBuzz. Q4. (1) Strings
24
Chapter 2: Basics
1. Create a Go program that prints the following (up to 100 characters):

A AA AAA AAAA AAAAA AAAAAA AAAAAAA ...
2. Create a program that counts the numbers of characters in this string:

asSASA ddd dsjkdsjs dk
Make it also output the number of bytes in that string. Hint. Check out the utf8 package. 3. Extend the program from the previous question to replace the three runes at position 4 with abc. 4. Write a Go program that reverses a string, so foobar is printed as raboof. Hint. Unfortunately you need to know about conversion, skip ahead to section Conversions on page 63. Q5. (4) Average 1. Give the code that calculates the average of a float64 slice. In a later exercise (Q6 you will make it into a function.
Answers
25
Answers
A2. (1) For-loop 1. There are a multitude of possibilities, one of the solutions could be: Listing 2.6. Simple for loop
package main import "fmt" func main() { for i := 0; i < 10; i++ { fmt.Printf("%d\n", i) } }
See
section For on page 15
Lets compile this and look at the output.

% 6g for.go && 6l -o for for.6 % ./for 0 1 . . . 9
2. Rewriting the loop results in code that should look something like this (only showing the main-function):
func main() { i := 0 I: i++ if i < 10 { goto I } }
Define Define
our loop variable a label
fmt.Printf("%d\n", i)
Jump
back to the label
3. The following is one possible solution: Listing 2.7. For loop with an array
func main() { var arr [10]int arr[i] = i }
Create
an array with 10 elements
for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
Fill
it one by one
26
Chapter 2: Basics
fmt.Printf("%v", arr) }
With
%v Go prints the type
You could even do this in one fell swoop by using a composite literal:
a := [...]int{0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} fmt.Printf("%v\n", a)
With
[...] you let Go count
A3. (1) FizzBuzz 1. A possible solution to this simple problem is the following program. Listing 2.8. Fizz-Buzz
package main import "fmt" func main() { const (
. FIZZ = 3 0
BUZZ = 5 ) var p bool
. 1
. for i := 1; i < 100; i++ { 2 ;

p = false
. if i%FIZZ == 0 { 3
fmt.Printf("Fizz") p = true }
. if i%BUZZ == 0 { 4
fmt.Printf("Buzz") p = true }
. if !p { 5
fmt.Printf("%v", i) }
. fmt.Println() 6
} }
. 0 Define two constants to make the code more readable. See section Constants; . 1 Holds if we already printed someting; . 2 for-loop, see section For . 3 If divisible by FIZZ, print Fizz; . 4 And if divisble by BUZZ, print Buzz. Note that we have also taken care of the FizzBuzz case;
Answers
27
. 5 If neither FIZZ nor BUZZ printed, print the value; . 6 Format each output on a new line.
A4. (1) Strings 1. This program is a solution: Listing 2.9. Strings

package main import "fmt" func main() { str := "A" for i := 0; i < 100; i++ { fmt.Printf("%s\n", str) str = str + "A" } }
String
concatenation
2. To answer this question we need some help of the unicode/utf8 package. First we check the documentation with go doc unicode/utf8 | less. When we read the documentation we notice func RuneCount(p []byte)int. Secondly we can convert string to a byte slice with
str := "hello" b := []byte(str)
Conversion,
see page 63
Putting this together leads to the following program. Listing 2.10. Runes in strings
package main import ( "fmt" "unicode/utf8" ) func main() { str := "dsjkdshdjsdh....js" fmt.Printf("String %s\nLenght: %d, Runes: %d\n", str, len([]byte(str)), utf8.RuneCount([]byte(str))) }
3. Reversing a string can be done as follows. We startfrom the left (i) and the right (j) and swap the characters as we see them:
28
Chapter 2: Basics
Listing 2.11. Reverse a string

import "fmt" func main() { s := "foobar" a := []byte(s) // Reverse a for i, j := 0, len(a)-1; i < j; i, j = i+1, j-1 { a[i], a[j] = a[j], a[i] } fmt.Printf("%s\n", string(a)) }
Again
a conversion
Parallel Convert
assignment
it back
A5. (4) Average 1. The following code calculates the average.

sum := 0.0 switch len(xs) { case 0: avg = 0 default: sum += v }
. 0 . 1
for _, v := range xs {
. avg = sum / float64(len(xs)) 2

}
. 0 If the length is zero, we return 0; . 1 Otherwise we calculate the average; . 2 We have to convert the value to a float64 to make the division work.
Functions
Im always delighted by the light touch and stillness of early programming languages. Not much text; a lot gets done. Old programs read like quiet conversations between a well-spoken research worker and a well- studied mechanical colleague, not as a debate with a compiler. Whod have guessed sophistication bought such noise? RICHARD P. GABRIEL
Functions are the basic building blocks in Go programs; all interesting stuff happens in them. A function is declared as follows: Listing 3.1. A function declaration .
type mytype int
New
type, see chapter 5
func (p mytype) funcname(q int) (r,s int) { return 0,0 }
. 0
. 1
. 2
. 3
. 4
. 5
. 0 The keyword func is used to declare a function; . 1 A function can be defined to work on a specific type, a more common name for such a function is method. This part is called a receiver and it is optional. This will be used in chapter 6; . 2 funcname is the name of your function; . 3 The variable q of type int is the input parameter. The parameters are passed passby-value meaning they are copied; . 4 The variables r and s are the named return parameters for this function. Functions in Go can have multiple return values, see section Multiple return values on page 32. If you want the return parameters not to be named you only give the types: ( int,int). If you have only one value to return you may omit the parentheses. If your function is a subroutine and does not have anything to return you may omit this entirely; . 5 This is the functions body, note that return is a statement so the braces around the parameter(s) are optional.
Here are a two examples, the left is a function without a return value, the one on the right is a simple function that returns its input.
Scope
31
func subroutine(in int) { return }
func identity(in int) int { return in }
Functions can be declared in any order you wish, the compiler scans the entire file before execution. So function prototyping is a thing of the past in Go. Go disallows nested functions. You can however work around this by using anonymous functions, see section Functions as values on page 36 in this chapter. Recursive functions just work as in other languages: Listing 3.2. Recursive function
func rec(i int) { if i == 10 { return } rec(i+1) fmt.Printf("%d ", i) }
This prints: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0.
Scope
Variables declared outside any functions are global in Go, those defined in functions are local to those functions. If names overlap a local variable is declared with the same name as a global one the local variable hides the global one when the current function is executed. Listing 3.3. Local scope .
package main var a = 6 func main() { p() q() p() } func p() { println(a) } func q() { a := 5 println(a) } } } func q() { } func p() { println(a)
Listing 3.4. Global scope .

package main var a = 6 func main() { p() q() p()
Definition
a = 5
Assignment
println(a)
32
Chapter 3: Functions
In listing 3.3 we introduce a local variable a in the function q(). This local a is only visible in q(). That is why the code will print: 656. In listing 3.4 no new variables are introduced, there is only a global a. Assigning a new value to a will be globally visible. This code will print: 655 In the following example we call g() from f(): Listing 3.5. Scope when calling functions from functions
package main var a int func main() { a = 5 println(a) f() } func f() { a := 6 println(a) g() } func g() { println(a) }
The printout will be: 565. A local variable is only valid when we are executing the function in which it is defined.
Multiple return values

One of Gos unusual (for compiled languages) features is that functions and methods can return multiple values (Python and Perl can do this too). This can be used to improve on a couple of clumsy idioms in C programs: in-band error returns (such as -1 for EOF) and modifying an argument. In Go, Write returns a count and an error: Yes, you wrote some bytes but not all of them because you filled the device. The signature of *File.Write in package os is:
func (file *File) Write(b []byte) (n int, err error)
and as the documentation says, it returns the number of bytes written and a non-nil error when n != len(b). This is a common style in Go. A similar approach obviates the need to pass a pointer to a return value to simulate a reference parameter. Heres a simple-minded function to grab a number from a position in a byte array, returning the number and the next position.
func nextInt(b []byte, i int) (int, int) { x := 0 // Naively assume everything is a number
Named result parameters
33
for ; i < len(b); i++ { x = x*10 + int(b[i])-'0' } return x, i }
You could use it to scan the numbers in an input array a like this:
a := []byte{'1', '2', '3', '4'} var x int for i := 0; i < len(a); { x, i = nextInt(a, i) println(x) }
No
i++
Without having tuples as a native type, multiple return values is the next best thing to have. You can return precisely what you want without overloading the domain space with special values to signal errors.
Named result parameters

The return or result parameters of a Go function can be given names and used as regular variables, just like the incoming parameters. When named, they are initialized to the zero values for their types when the function begins; if the function executes a return statement with no arguments, the current values of the result parameters are used as the returned values. Using this features enables you (again) to do more with less code a . The names are not mandatory but they can make code shorter and clearer: they are documentation. If we name the results of nextInt it becomes obvious which returned int is which.
func nextInt(b []byte, pos int) (value, nextPos int) { /* ... */ }
Because named results are initialized and tied to an unadorned return, they can simplify as well as clarify. Heres a version of io.ReadFull that uses them well:
func ReadFull(r Reader, buf []byte) (n int, err error) { for len(buf) > 0 && err == nil { var nr int nr, err = r.Read(buf) n += nr buf = buf[nr:len(buf)] } return }
In the following example we declare a simple function which calculates the factorial value of a value x.
Some text in this section comes from [5].
This is a motto of Go; Do more with less code
34
func Factorial(x int) int { if x == 0 { return 1 } else {
func
Factorial(x int) (int) is also OK
return x * Factorial(x - 1) } }
So you could also write factorial as:

func Factorial(x int) (result int) { if x == 0 { result = 1 } else { result = x * Factorial(x - 1) } return }
When we use named result values, the code is shorter and easier to read. You can also write a function with multiple return values:
func fib(n) (val, pos int) { if n == 0 { val = 1 pos = 0 } else if n == 1 { val = 1 pos = 1 } else { v1, _ := fib(n-1) v2, _ := fib(n-2) val = v1 + v2 pos = n } return }
Both
ints
Deferred code
Suppose you have a function in which you open a file and perform various writes and reads on it. In such a function there are often spots where you want to return early. If you do that, you will need to close the file descriptor you are working on. This often leads to the following code: Listing 3.6. Without defer
func ReadWrite() bool { file.Open("file") // Do your thing if failureX {
Deferred code
35
file.Close() return false } if failureY { file.Close() return false } file.Close() return true }
Here a lot of code is repeated. To overcome this Go has the defer statement. After defer you specify a function which is called just before a return from the function is executed. The code above could be rewritten as follows. This makes the function more readable, shorter and puts the Close right next to the Open. Listing 3.7. With defer
func ReadWrite() bool { file.Open("file") defer file.Close() // Do your thing if failureX { return false } if failureY { return false } return true }
file.Close() Close() And
is added to the defer list
is now done automatically
here too
You can put multiple functions on the deferred list, like this example from [12]:
for i := 0; i < 5; i++ { defer fmt.Printf("%d ", i) }
Deferred functions are executed in LIFO order, so the above code prints: 4 3 2 1 0. With defer you can even change return values, provided that you are using named result parameters and a function literalb , i.e: Listing 3.8. Function literal
defer func() { /* ... */ }()
()
is needed here
Or this example which makes it easier to understand why and where you need the braces: Listing 3.9. Function literal with parameters
b
A function literal is sometimes called a closure.
36
defer func(x int) { /* ... */ }(5)
Give
the input variable x the value 5
In that (unnamed) function you can access any named return parameter: Listing 3.10. Access return values within defer
func f() (ret int) { defer func() { ret++ }() return 0 }
ret
is initialized with zero
Increment 1
ret with 1
not 0 will be returned!
Variadic parameters
Functions that take variadic parameters are functions that have a variable number of parameters. To do this, you first need to declare your function to take variadic arguments:
func myfunc(arg ...int) {}
The arg ... int instructs Go to see this as a function that takes a variable number of arguments. Note that these arguments all have the type int. Inside your functions body the variable arg is a slice of ints:
for _, n := range arg { fmt.Printf("And the number is: %d\n", n) }
If you dont specify the type of the variadic argument it defaults to the empty interface interface{} (see chapter 6). Suppose we have another variadic function called myfunc2, the following example shows how to pass the variadic arguments to it:
func myfunc(arg ...int) { myfunc2(arg...) myfunc2(arg[:2]...) }
Pass it as-is Slice it
Functions as values
As with almost everything in Go, functions are also just values. They can be assigned to variables as follows: Listing 3.11. Anonymous function
func main() { a := func() { println("Hello") } a() }
Define
a nameless function and assign to a
No () here Call the function
Callbacks
37
If we use fmt.Printf("%T\n", a) to print the type of a, it prints func(). Functionsasvalues may also be used in other places, like in maps. Here we convert from integers to functions: Listing 3.12. Functions as values in maps
var xs = map[int]func() int{ 1: func() int { return 10 }, 2: func() int { return 20 }, 3: func() int { return 30 }, /* ... */ }
Mandatory
Or you can write a function that takes a function as its parameter, for example a Map function that works on int slices. This is left as an exercise for the reader, see exercise Q12 on page 39.
Callbacks
With functions as values they are easy to pass to functions, from where they can be used as callbacks. First define a function that does something with an integer value:
func printit(x int) { fmt.Print("%v\n", x) }
Function returns Just print it
nothing
The signature of this function is: func printit(int), or without the function name: func(int). To create a new function that uses this one as a callback we need to use this signature:
func callback(y int, f func(int)) { f(y) }
Call
will hold the function
the callback f with y
Panic and recovering

Go does not have a exception mechanism, like that in Java for instance: you can not throw exceptions. Instead it uses a panic-and-recover mechanism. It is worth remembering that you should use this as a last resort, your code will not look, or be, better if it is littered with panics. Its a powerful tool: use it wisely. So, how do you use it? The following description was taken from [11]: Panic is a built-in function that stops the ordinary flow of control and begins panicking. When the function F calls panic, execution of F stops, any deferred functions in F are executed normally, and then F returns to its caller. To the caller, F then behaves like a call to panic. The process continues up the stack until all functions in the current goroutine have returned, at which point the program crashes. Panics can be initiated by invoking panic directly. They can also be caused by runtime errors, such as out-of-bounds array accesses.
TODO Create example code.
38
Recover is a built-in function that regains control of a panicking goroutine. Recover is only useful inside deferred functions. During normal execution, a call to recover will return nil and have no other effect. If the current goroutine is panicking, a call to recover will capture the value given to panic and resume normal execution. This function checks if the function it gets as argument will panic when it is executedc : . func throwsPanic(f func()) (b bool) { 0 . defer func() { 1
if x := recover(); x != nil { b = true } }()
. f() 2 . return 3
}
. 0 We define a new function throwsPanic that takes a fuction as an argument, see Functions as values. It returns true when this function will panic, otherwise false; . 1 We define a defer function that utilizes recover, if the current goroutine panics, this defer function will notice that. If recover() returns non-nil we set b to true; . 2 Execute the function we received as the argument; . 3 Return the value of b. Because b is a named return parameter (page 33), we dont specify b.
Exercises
Q6. (4) Average 1. Write a function that calculates the average of a float64 slice. Q7. (3) Integer ordering 1. Write a function that returns its (two) parameters in the right, numerical (ascending) order:
f(7,2) 2,7 f(2,7) 2,7
Q8. (4) Scope 1. What is wrong with the following program?

package main import "fmt"
c
Copied from a presentation of Eleanor McHugh.
Exercises
39
func main() { for i := 0; i < 10; i++ { fmt.Printf("%v\n", i) } fmt.Printf("%v\n", i) }
5 6 7 8 9 10
Q9. (5) Stack 1. Create a simple stack which can hold a fixed amount of ints. It does not have to grow beyond this limit. Define both a push put something on the stack and a pop retrieve something from the stack function. The stack should be a LIFO (last in, first out) stack.
Figure 3.1. A simple LIFO stack

i++
push(k)
i--
k l
pop()
2. Bonus. Write a String method which converts the stack to a string representation. This way you can print the stack using: fmt.Printf("My stack %v\n", stack) The stack in the figure could be represented as: [0:m] [1:l] [2:k] Q10. (5) Var args 1. Write a function that takes a variable numbers of ints and prints each integer on a separate line Q11. (5) Fibonacci 1. The Fibonacci sequence starts as follows: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, . . . Or in mathematical terms: x1 = 1; x2 = 1; xn = xn1 + xn2 n > 2. Write a function that takes an int value and gives that many terms of the Fibonacci sequence. Q12. (4) Map function A map()-function is a function that takes a function and a list. The function is applied to each member in the list and a new list containing these calculated values is returned. Thus: map(f (), (a1 , a2 , . . . , an1 , an ))
= (f (a1 ), f (a2 ), . . . , f (an1 ), f (an ))
1. Write a simple map()-function in Go. It is sufficient for this function only to work for ints. 2. Expand your code to also work on a list of strings. Q13. (3) Minimum and maximum
40
1. Write a function that calculates the maximum value in an int slice ([]int). 2. Write a function that calculates the minimum value in a int slice ([]int). Q14. (5) Bubble sort 1. Write a function that performs Bubble sort on slice of ints. From [32]: It works by repeatedly stepping through the list to be sorted, comparing each pair of adjacent items and swapping them if they are in the wrong order. The pass through the list is repeated until no swaps are needed, which indicates that the list is sorted. The algorithm gets its name from the way smaller elements bubble to the top of the list. [32] also gives an example in pseudo code:
procedure bubbleSort( A : list of sortable items ) do swapped = false for each i in 1 to length(A) - 1 inclusive do: if A[i-1] > A[i] then swap( A[i-1], A[i] ) swapped = true end if end for while swapped end procedure
Q15. (6) Functions that return functions 1. Write a function that returns a function that performs a +2 on integers. Name the function plusTwo. You should then be able do the following:
p := plusTwo() fmt.Printf("%v\n", p(2))
Which should print 4. See section Callbacks on page 37 for information about this topic. 2. Generalize the function from 1, and create a plusX(x) which returns a functions that add x to an integer.
Answers
41
Answers
A6. (4) Average 1. The following function calculates the average. Listing 3.13. Average function in Go . func average(xs []float64) (avg float64) { 0
sum := 0.0 switch len(xs) { case 0: avg = 0 default: sum += v }
. 1 . 2
for _, v := range xs {
. avg = sum / float64(len(xs)) 3

} return }
. 4
. 0 We use a named return parameter; . 1 If the length is zero, we return 0; . 2 Otherwise we calculate the average; . 3 We have to convert the value to a float64 to make the division work; . 4 We have an avarage, return it.
A7. (3) Integer ordering 1. Here we can use the multiple return values (section Multiple return values) from Go:
func order(a, b int) (int, int) { if a > b { return b,a } return a,b }
A8. (4) Scope 1. The program does not even compile, because i on line 9 is not defined: i is only defined within the for-loop. To fix this the function main() should become:
func main() { var i int for i = 0; i < 10; i++ {
42
fmt.Printf("%v\n", i) } fmt.Printf("%v\n", i) }
Now i is defined outside the for-loop and still visible afterwards. This code will print the numbers 0 through 10. A9. (5) Stack 1. First we define a new type that represents a stack; we need an array (to hold the keys) and an index, which points to the last element. Our small stack can only hold 10 elements.
type stack struct { i } int data [10]int
stack
is not exported
Next we need the push and pop functions to actually use the thing. First we show the wrong solution! In Go data passed to functions is passed-by-value meaning a copy is created and given to the function. The first stab for the function push could be:
func (s stack) push(k int) { if s.i+1 > 9 { return } s.data[s.i] = k s.i++ }
Works
on copy of argument
The function works on the s which is of the type stack. To use this we just call s.push(50), to push the integer 50 on the stack. But the push function gets a copy of s, so it is not working the real thing. Nothing gets pushed to our stack this way, for example the following code:
var s stack s.push(25) fmt.Printf("stack %v\n", s); s.push(14) fmt.Printf("stack %v\n", s);
make
s a simple stack variable
prints:
stack [0:0] stack [0:0]
To solve this we need to give the function push a pointer to the stack. This means we need to change push from
func (s stack)push(k int) func (s *stack)push(k int)
We should now use new() (see Allocation with new in chapter 5) to create a pointer to a newly allocated stack, so line 1 from the example above needs to be
s := new(stack)
Answers
43
And our two functions become:

func (s *stack) push(k int) { s.data[s.i] = k s.i++ } func (s *stack) pop() int { s.i-return s.data[s.i] }
Which we then use as follows

func main() { var s stack s.push(25) s.push(14) fmt.Printf("stack %v\n", s) }
2. While this was a bonus question, having the ability to print the stack was very valuable when writing the code for this exercise. According to the Go documentation fmt.Printf("%v") can print any value (%v) that satisfies the Stringer interface. For this to work we only need to define a String() function for our type: Listing 3.14. stack.String()
func (s stack) String() string { var str string for i := 0; i <= s.i; i++ { str = str + "[" + strconv.Itoa(i) + ":" + strconv.Itoa(s.data[i ]) + "]" } return str }
A10. (5) Var args 1. For this we need the ...-syntax to signal we define a function that takes an arbitrary number of arguments. Listing 3.15. A function with variable number of arguments
package main import "fmt" func main() { printthem(1, 4, 5, 7, 4)
44
printthem(1, 2, 4) } func printthem(numbers ... int) { for _, d := range numbers { fmt.Printf("%d\n", d) } }
numbers
is now a slice of ints
A11. (5) Fibonacci 1. The following program calculates the Fibonacci numbers. Listing 3.16. Fibonacci function in Go
package main import "fmt" func fibonacci(value int) []int {
. x := make([]int, value) 0 . x[0], x[1] = 1, 1 1

for n := 2; n < value; n++ {
. x[n] = x[n-1] + x[n-2] 2

}
. return x 3
} func main() {
. for _, term := range fibonacci(10) { 4

fmt.Printf("%v ", term) } }
. 0 We create an array to hold the integers up to the value given in the function call; . 1 Starting point of the Fibonicai calculation; . 2 xn = xn1 + xn2 ; . 3 Return the entire array; . 4 Using the range keyword we walk the numbers returned by the fibonacci funcion. Here up to 10. And we print them.
A12. (4) Map function Listing 3.17. A Map function 1. func Map(f func(int) int, l []int) []int {
Answers
45
j := make([]int, len(l)) for k, v := range l { j[k] = f(v) } return j } func main() { m := []int{1, 3, 4} f := func(i int) int { return i * i } fmt.Printf("%v", (Map(f, m))) }
2. Answer to question but now with strings A13. (3) Minimum and maximum 1. This a function for calculating a maximum:
func max(l []int) (max int) { max = l[0] for _, v := range l { if v > max { max = v } } return }
. 0 . 1 . 2
. 3
. 0 We use a named return parameter; . 1 Loop over l. The index of the element is not important; . 2 If we find a new maximum, remember it; . 3 A lone return, the current value of max is now returned. 2. This a function for calculating a minimum, that is almost identical to max:
func min(l []int) (min int) { min = l[0] for _, v := range l { if v < min { min = v } } return }
The interested reader may combine max and min into one function with a selector that lets you choose between the minimum or the maximum, or one that returns both values.
46
A14. (5) Bubble sort 1. The Bubble sort isnt terribly efficient, for n elements it scales O(n2 ). See QuickSort [24] for a better sorting algorithm. But Bubble sort is easy to implement, the following is an example. Listing 3.18. Bubble sort
func main() { n := []int{5, -1, 0, 12, 3, 5} fmt.Printf("unsorted %v\n", n) bubblesort(n) fmt.Printf("sorted %v\n", n) } func bubblesort(n []int) { for i := 0; i < len(n) - 1; i++ { for j := i + 1; j < len(n); j++ { if n[j] < n[i] { n[i], n[j] = n[j], n[i] } } } }
Because a slice is a reference type the bubblesort function works and does not need to return a sorted slice. A15. (6) Functions that return functions 1. func main() {
p2 := plusTwo() fmt.Printf("%v\n",p2(2)) }
. func plusTwo() func(int) int { 0 . return func(x int) int { return x + 2 } 1

}
. 0 Define a new function that returns a function. See how you you can just write down what you mean; . 1 Function literals at work, we define the +2function right there in the return statement. 2. Here we use a closure: . func plusX(x int) func(int) int { 0 . return func(y int) int { return x + y } 1
}
Answers
47
. 0 Again define a function that returns a function; . 1 Use the local variable x in the function literal.
Packages
^ Answer to whether there is a bit wise negation operator. KEN THOMPSON
Packages are a collection of functions and data. You declare a package with the package keyword. The file name does not have to match the package name. The convention for package names is to use lowercase characters. Go packages may consist of multiple files, but they share the package <name> line. Lets define a package even in the file even.go. Listing 4.1. A small package
package even func Even(i int) bool { return i % 2 == 0 } func odd(i int) bool { return i % 2 == 1 }
Start
our own namespace
Exported
function
Private
function
Names that start with a capital letter are exported and may be used outside your package, more on that later. Now we just need to build the package. We create a directory under $GOPATH, copy the even.go to there (see Compiling and running code in chapter 2).
% mkdir $GOPATH/src/even % go build even
% cp even.go $GOPATH/src/even
Create top-level directory Copy the package file Build it
Next we can use the package in our own program myeven.go: Listing 4.2. Use of the even package
package main
import ( "even" "fmt" ) func main() { i := 5
. 0 . 1 . 2
. fmt.Printf("Is %d even? %v\n", i, even.Even(i)) 3

}
Identifiers
49
. 0 Import the following packages; . 1 The local package even is imported here; . 2 The official fmt package gets imported; . 3 Use the function from the even package. The syntax for accessing a function from a package is <package>.Function().
% go build myeven.go % ./myeven Is 5 even? false
In Go, a function from a package is exported (visible outside the package, i.e. public) when the first letter of the function name is a capital, hence the function name Even. If we change our myeven.go on line 10 to using the unexported function even.odd:
fmt.Printf("Is %d even? %v\n", i, even.odd(i))
We get an error when compiling, because we are trying to use a private function:
myeven.go:10: cannot refer to unexported name even.odd
To summarize: Public functions have a name starting with a capital letter; Private function have a name starting with a lowercase letter. This convention also holds true for other names (new types, global variables) you define in a package. Note that the term capital is not limited to US ASCII, it extends into the entire Unicode range. So capital Greek, Coptic, etc. is OK too.
Identifiers
Names are as important in Go as in any other language. In some cases they even have semantic effect: for instance, the visibility of a name outside a package is determined by whether its first character is upper case. Its therefore worth spending a little time talking about naming conventions in Go programs. The convention that is used was to leave well-known legacy not-quite-words alone rather than try to figure out where the capital letters go. Atoi, Getwd, Chmod. Camelcasing works best when you have whole words to work with: ReadFile, NewWriter, MakeSlice. Package names When a package is imported (with import), the package name becomes an accessor for the contents. After
import "bytes"
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Chapter 4: Packages
the importing package can talk about bytes.Buffer. Its helpful if everyone using the package can use the same name to refer to its contents, which implies that the package name should be good: short, concise, and evocative. By convention, packages are given lower case, single-word names; there should be no need for underscores or mixedCaps. Err on the side of brevity, since everyone using your package will be typing that name. And dont worry about collisions a priori. The package name is only the default name for imports. With the above import you can use bytes.Buffer. With
import bar "bytes"
it becomes bar.Buffer. So it does need not be unique across all source code, and in the rare case of a collision the importing package can choose a different name to use locally. In any case, confusion is rare because the file name in the import determines just which package is being used. Another convention is that the package name is the base name of its source directory; the package in src/pkg/compress/gzip is imported as compress/gzip but has name gzip, not compress_gzip and not compressGzip. The importer of a package will use the name to refer to its contents, so exported names in the package can use that fact to avoid stutter. For instance, the buffered reader type in the bufio package is called Reader, not BufReader, because users see it as bufio.Reader, which is a clear, concise name. Moreover, because imported entities are always addressed with their package name, bufio.Reader does not conflict with io.Reader. Similarly, the function to make new instances of ring.Ring (package container/ring) which is the definition of a constructor in Gowould normally be called NewRing, but since Ring is the only type exported by the package, and since the package is called ring, its called just New. Clients of the package see that as ring.New. Use the package structure to help you choose good names. Another short example is once.Do (see package sync); once.Do(setup) reads well and would not be improved by writing once.DoOrWaitUntilDone(setup). Long names dont automatically make things more readable. If the name represents something intricate or subtle, its usually better to write a helpful doc comment than to attempt to put all the information into the name. Finally, the convention in Go is to use MixedCaps or mixedCaps rather than underscores to write multi-word names.
Documenting packages
This text is copied from [12].
Every package should have a package comment, a block comment preceding the package clause. For multi-file packages, the package comment only needs to be present in one file, and any one will do. The package comment should introduce the package and provide information relevant to the package as a whole. It will appear first on the go doc page and should set up the detailed documentation that follows. An example from the official regexp package:
/* The regexp package implements a simple library for regular expressions. The syntax of the regular expressions accepted is:
Testing packages
51
regexp: concatenation */ package regexp '|' concatenation
Each defined (and exported) function should have a small line of text documenting the behavior of the function. An example from the fmt package:
// Printf formats according to a format specifier and writes to standard // output. It returns the number of bytes written and any write error // encountered. func Printf(format string, a ...interface) (n int, err error)
Testing packages
In Go it is customary to write (unit) tests for your package. Writing tests involves the testing package and the program go test. Both have excellent documentation. When you include tests with your package keep in mind that they have to build using the standard Makefile (see section ??). The testing itself is carried out with go test. The go test program runs all the test functions. Without any defined tests for our even package, go test yields:
% go test ? even [no test files]
Let us fix this by defining a test in a test file. Test files reside in the package directory and are named *_test.go. Those test files are just like other Go programs, but go test will only execute the test functions. Each test function has the same signature and its name should start with Test:
func TestXxx(t *testing.T)
Test<Capital>restOftheName
When writing test you will need to tell go test that a test has failed or was successful. A successful test function just returns. When the test fails you can signal this with the following functions [15]. These are the most important ones (see go doc testing for more):
func (t *T) Fail() Fail marks the test function as having failed but continues execution. func (t *T) FailNow() FailNow marks the test function as having failed and stops its execution. Execution will
continue at the next test. So any other test in this file are skipped too.
func (t *T) Log(args ...interface{}) Log formats its arguments using default formatting, analogous to Print(), and records the
text in the error log.

func (t *T) Fatal(args ...interface{})
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Chapter 4: Packages
Fatal is equivalent to Log() followed by FailNow().
Putting all this together we can write our test. First we pick a name: even_test.go. Then we add the following contents: Listing 4.3. Test file for even package
package even import "testing" func TestEven(t *testing.T) { if ! Even(2) { t.Log("2 should be even!") t.Fail() } }
1
5 6 7 8 9 10
Note that we use package even on line 1, the tests fall in the same namespace as the package we are testing. This not only convenient, but also allows tests of unexported function and structures. We then import the testing package and on line 5 we define the only test function in this file. The displayed Go code should not hold any surprises: we check if the Even function works OK. Now, the moment weve been waiting for, executing the test:
% go test ok even 0.001s
Our test ran and reported ok. Success! To show how a failed test looks we redefine our test function:
// Entering the twilight zone func TestEven(t *testing.T) { if Even(2) { t.Log("2 should be odd!") t.Fail() } }
We now get:
FAIL
even
0.004s
--- FAIL: TestEven (0.00 seconds) 2 should be odd! FAIL
And you can act accordingly (by fixing the test for instance). Writing new packages should go hand in hand with writing (some) documentation and test functions. It will make your code better and it shows that you really put in the effort.
Useful packages
53
Useful packages
The standard Go repository includes a huge number of packages and it is even possible to install more along side your current Go installation. It is very enlightening to browse the $GOROOT/src/pkg directory and look at the packages. We cannot comment on each package, but the following are worth a mention: a fmt Package fmt implements formatted I/O with functions analogous to Cs printf and scanf. The format verbs are derived from Cs but are simpler. Some verbs (%sequences) that can be used: %v The value in a default format. when printing structs, the plus flag (%+v) adds field names; %#v a Go-syntax representation of the value. %T a Go-syntax representation of the type of the value; io This package provides basic interfaces to I/O primitives. Its primary job is to wrap existing implementations of such primitives, such as those in package os, into shared public interfaces that abstract the functionality, plus some other related primitives. bufio This package implements buffered I/O. It wraps an io.Reader or io.Writer object, creating another object (Reader or Writer) that also implements the interface but provides buffering and some help for textual I/O. sort The sort package provides primitives for sorting arrays and user-defined collections. strconv The strconv package implements conversions to and from string representations of basic data types. os The os package provides a platform-independent interface to operating system functionality. The design is Unix-like. sync The package sync provides basic synchronization primitives such as mutual exclusion locks. flag The flag package implements command-line flag parsing. See Command line arguments on page 91.
a
The descriptions are copied from the packages go doc. Extra remarks are type set in italic.
54
Chapter 4: Packages
json The json package implements encoding and decoding of JSON objects as defined in RFC 4627 [6]. template Data-driven templates for generating textual output such as HTML. Templates are executed by applying them to a data structure. Annotations in the template refer to elements of the data structure (typically a field of a struct or a key in a map) to control execution and derive values to be displayed. The template walks the structure as it executes and the cursor @ represents the value at the current location in the structure. http The http package implements parsing of HTTP requests, replies, and URLs and provides an extensible HTTP server and a basic HTTP client. unsafe The unsafe package contains operations that step around the type safety of Go programs. Normally you dont need this package. reflect The reflect package implements run-time reflection, allowing a program to manipulate objects with arbitrary types. The typical use is to take a value with static type interface{} and extract its dynamic type information by calling TypeOf, which returns an object with interface type Type. See chapter 6, section Introspection and reflection. exec The exec package runs external commands.
Exercises
Q16. (2) Stack as package 1. See the Q9 exercise. In this exercise we want to create a separate package for that code. Create a proper package for your stack implementation, Push, Pop and the Stack type need to be exported. 2. Write a simple unit test for this package. You should at least test that a Pop works after a Push. Q17. (7) Calculator 1. Create a reverse polish calculator. Use your stack package.
Answers
55
Answers
A16. (2) Stack as package 1. There are a few details that should be changed to make a proper package for our stack. First, the exported functions should begin with a capital letter and so should Stack. The package file is named stack-as-package.go and contains: Listing 4.4. Stack in a package
package stack // Stack holds the items. type Stack struct { i } // Push pushes an item on the stack. func (s *Stack) Push(k int) { s.data[s.i] = k s.i++ } // Pop pops an item from the stack. func (s *Stack) Pop() (ret int) { s.i-ret = s.data[s.i] return } int data [10]int
2. To make the unit testing work properly you need to do some preparations. Well come to those in a minute. First the actual unit test. Create a file with the name pushpop_test.go, with the following contents: Listing 4.5. Push/Pop test
package stack import "testing" func TestPushPop(t *testing.T) { c := new(Stack) c.Push(5) if c.Pop() != 5 { t.Log("Pop doesn't give 5") t.Fail() } }
56
Chapter 4: Packages
For go test to work we need to put our package files in a directory under $GOPATH/src (see page ??).
% mkdir $GOPATH/src/stack % cp pushpop_test.go $GOPATH/src/stack % cp stack-as-package.go $GOPATH/src/stack go test stack ok stack 0.001s
A17. (7) Calculator 1. This is one answer: Listing 4.6. A (rpn) calculator
package main import ( "bufio"; "os"; "strconv"; "fmt") var reader *bufio.Reader = bufio.NewReader(os.Stdin) var st = new(Stack) type Stack struct { i } func (s *Stack) push(k int) { if s.i+1 > 9 { return } s.data[s.i] = k s.i++ } func (s *Stack) pop() (ret int) { s.i-if s.i < 0 { s.i = 0; return } ret = s.data[s.i] return } func main() { for { s, err := reader.ReadString('\n') var token string if err != nil { return } for _, c := range s { switch { case c >= '0' && c <= '9': token = token + string(c) case c == ' ': r, _ := strconv.Atoi(token) st.push(r) token = "" int data [10]int
Answers
57
case c == '+': fmt.Printf("%d\n", st.pop()+st.pop()) case c == '*': fmt.Printf("%d\n", st.pop()*st.pop()) case c == '-': p := st.pop() q := st.pop() fmt.Printf("%d\n", q-p) case c == 'q': return default: //error } } } }
Beyond the basics

Go has pointers but not pointer arithmetic. You cannot use a pointer variable to walk through the bytes of a string. Go For C++ Programmers GO AUTHORS
Go has pointers. There is however no pointer arithmetic, so they act more like references than pointers that you may know from C. Pointers are useful. Remember that when you call a function in Go, the variables are pass-by-value. So, for efficiency and the possibility to modify a passed value in functions we have pointers. You declare a pointer by prefixing the type with an *: var p *int. Now p is a pointer to an integer value. All newly declared variables are assigned their zero value and pointers are no different. A newly declared pointer, or just a pointer that points to nothing, has a nil-value. In other languages this is often called a NULL pointer in Go it is just nil. To make a pointer point to something you can use the address-of operator (&), which we here: Listing 5.1. Use of a pointer
var p *int fmt.Printf("%v", p) var i int p = &i fmt.Printf("%v", p)
Prints
nil
Declare integer Make p point to Prints
variable i i
something like 0x7ff96b81c000a
De-referencing a pointer is done by prefixing the pointer variable with *: Listing 5.2. Dereferencing a pointer
p = &i *p = 8 fmt.Printf("%v\n", *p) fmt.Printf("%v\n", i)
Take the address Change the value Prints 8 Idem
of i of i
As said, there is no pointer arithmetic, so if you write: *p++, it is interpreted as (*p)++: first reference and then increment the value. a
Allocation
Go also has garbage collection, meaning that you dont have to worry about memory deallocation. To allocate memory Go has two primitives, new and make. They do different things and apply to different types, which can be confusing, but the rules are simple. The following
a
See exercise 18.
Allocation
59
sections show how to handle allocation in Go and hopefully clarifies the somewhat artificial distinction between new and make. Allocation with new The built-in function new is essentially the same as its namesakes in other languages: new(T) allocates zeroed storage for a new item of type T and returns its address, a value of type *T. In Go terminology, it returns a pointer to a newly allocated zero value of type T. This is important to remember:
new returns a pointer.
This means a user of the data structure can create one with new and get right to work. For example, the documentation for bytes.Buffer states that the zero value for Buffer is an empty buffer ready to use. Similarly, sync.Mutex does not have an explicit constructor or Init method. Instead, the zero value for a sync.Mutex is defined to be an unlocked mutex. The zero-value-is-useful property works transitively. Consider this type declaration. See section Defining your own types on page 61.
type SyncedBuffer struct { lock buffer } sync.Mutex bytes.Buffer
Values of type SyncedBuffer are also ready to use immediately upon allocation or just declaration. In this snippet, both p and v will work correctly without further arrangement.
p := new(SyncedBuffer) var v SyncedBuffer
Type Type
*SyncedBuffer, ready to use SyncedBuffer, idem
Allocation with make Back to allocation. The built-in function make(T, args) serves a purpose different from
new(T). It creates slices, maps, and channels only, and it returns an initialized (not zero)
value of type T, not *T. The reason for the distinction is that these three types are, under the covers, references to data structures that must be initialized before use. A slice, for example, is a three-item descriptor containing a pointer to the data (inside an array), the length, and the capacity; until those items are initialized, the slice is nil. For slices, maps, and channels, make initializes the internal data structure and prepares the value for use.
make returns initialized (non zero) values.
For instance, make([]int, 10, 100) allocates an array of 100 ints and then creates a slice structure with length 10 and a capacity of 100 pointing at the first 10 elements of the array. In contrast, new([]int) returns a pointer to a newly allocated, zeroed slice structure, that is, a pointer to a nil slice value. These examples illustrate the difference between new and make.
var p *[]int = new([]int)
Allocates slice Rarely useful
structure; *p == nil
60
Chapter 5: Beyond the basics
var v
[]int = make([]int, 100)
refers to a new array of 100 ints
var p *[]int = new([]int) *p = make([]int, 100, 100) v := make([]int, 100)
Unnecessarily Idiomatic
complex
Remember that make applies only to maps, slices and channels and does not return a pointer. To obtain an explicit pointer allocate with new. new allocates; make initializes The above two paragraphs can be summarized as: new(T) returns *T pointing to a zeroed T make(T) returns an initialized T And of course make is only used for slices, maps and channels.
Constructors and composite literals
Sometimes the zero value isnt good enough and an initializing constructor is necessary, as in this example taken from the package os.
func NewFile(fd int, name string) *File { if fd < 0 { return nil } f := new(File) f.fd = fd f.name = name f.dirinfo = nil f.nepipe = 0 return f }
Theres a lot of boiler plate in there. We can simplify it using a composite literal, which is an expression that creates a new instance each time it is evaluated.
func NewFile(fd int, name string) *File { if fd < 0 { return nil } f := File{fd, name, nil, 0} return &f }
Create Return
a new File the address of f
It is OK to return the address of a local variable; the storage associated with the variable survives after the function returns.
Defining your own types
61
In fact, taking the address of a composite literal allocates a fresh instance each time it is evaluated, so we can combine these last two lines.b
return &File{fd, name, nil, 0}
The items (called fields) of a composite literal are laid out in order and must all be present. However, by labeling the elements explicitly as field:value pairs, the initializers can appear in any order, with the missing ones left as their respective zero values. Thus we could say
return &File{fd: fd, name: name}
As a limiting case, if a composite literal contains no fields at all, it creates a zero value for the type. The expressions new(File) and &File{} are equivalent. Composite literals can also be created for arrays, slices, and maps, with the field labels being indices or map keys as appropriate. In these examples, the initializations work regardless of the values of Enone, and Einval, as long as they are distinct.
ar := [...]string sl := []string {Enone: "no error", Einval: "invalid argument"} {Enone: "no error", Einval: "invalid argument"}
ma := map[int]string {Enone: "no error", Einval: "invalid argument"}
Defining your own types

Of course Go allows you to define new types, it does this with the type keyword:
type foo int
Creates a new type foo which acts like an int. Creating more sophisticated types is done with the struct keyword. An example would be when we want record somebodys name (string) and age (int) in a single structure and make it a new type: Listing 5.3. Structures
package main import "fmt" type NameAge struct { name string age } func main() { a := new(NameAge) a.name = "Pete"; a.age = 42 fmt.Printf("%v\n", a) } int
Not Not
exported exported
Apropos, the output of fmt.Printf("%v\n", a) is
Taking the address of a composite literal tells the compiler to allocate it on the heap, not the stack.
62
&{Pete 42}
That is nice! Go knows how to print your structure. If you only want to print one, or a few, fields of the structure youll need to use .<field name>. For example to only print the name:
fmt.Printf("%s", a.name)
%s
formats a string
More on structure fields As said each item in a structure is called a field. A struct with no fields: struct {} Or one with fourc fields:
struct { x, y int A *[]int F func() }
If you omit the name for a field, you create an anonymous field, for instance:
struct { T1 *T2 P.T3 x, y int }
Field Field Field Field
name is T1 name is T2 name is T3 names are x and y
Note that field names that start with a capital letter are exported, i.e. can be set or read from other packages. Field names that start with a lowercase are private to the current package. The same goes for functions defined in packages, see chapter 4 for the details. Methods If you create functions that works on your newly defined type, you can take two routes: 1. Create a function that takes the type as an argument.
func doSomething(in1 *NameAge, in2 int) { /* ... */ }
This is (you might have guessed) a function call. 2. Create a function that works on the type (see receiver in listing 3.1):
func (in1 *NameAge) doSomething(in2 int) { /* ... */ }
This is a method call, which can be used as:

var n *NameAge n.doSomething(2)
Yes, four (4).
Conversions
63
Whether to use a function or method is entirely up to the programmer, but if you want to satisfy an interface (see the next chapter) you must use methods. If no such requirement exists it is a matter of taste whether to use functions or methods. But keep the following in mind, this is quoted from [14]: If x is addressable and &xs method set contains m, x.m() is shorthand for (&x).m(). In the above case this means that the following is not an error:
var n NameAge n.doSomething(2)
Not
a pointer
Here Go will search the method list for n of type NameAge, come up empty and will then also search the method list for the type *NameAge and will translate this call to (&n).doSomething (2). There is a subtle but major difference between the following type declarations. Also see [14, section Type Declarations]. Suppose we have:
// A Mutex is a data type with two methods, Lock and Unlock. type Mutex struct func (m *Mutex) Lock() func (m *Mutex) Unlock() { /* Mutex fields */ } { /* Lock implementation */ } { /* Unlock implementation */ }
We now create two types in two different manners: type NewMutex Mutex; type PrintableMutex struct {Mutex }. Now NewMutux is equal to Mutex, but is does not have any of the methods of Mutex. In other words its method set is empty. But PrintableMutex has inherited the method set from Mutex. In the words of [14]: The method set of *PrintableMutex contains the methods Lock and Unlock bound to its anonymous field Mutex.
Conversions
Sometimes you want to convert a type to another type. This is possible in Go, but there are some rules. For starters, converting from one value to another is done by operators (that look like functions: byte()) and not all conversions are allowed. Table 5.1. Valid conversions, float64 works the same as float32 From To
[]byte []int string float32 int string(xb) xb []byte xi []int s string f float32 i int

string(xi)
[]byte(s) []int(s)

int(f) float32(i)
64
From a string to a slice of bytes or ints.

mystring := "hello this is string" byteslice := []byte(mystring)
Converts to a byte slice, each byte contains the integer value of the corresponding byte in the string. Note that as strings in Go are encoded in UTF-8 some characters in the string may end up in 1, 2, 3 or 4 bytes.
intslice := []int(mystring)
Converts to an int slice, each int contains a Unicode code point. Every character from the string corresponds to one integer. From a slice of bytes or ints to a string.
b := []byte{'h','e','l','l','o'} s := string(b) i := []int{257,1024,65} r := string(i)
Composite
literal
For numeric values the following conversions are defined: Convert to a integer with a specific (bit) length: uint8(int); From floating point to an integer value: int(float32). This discards the fraction part from the floating point value; The other way around: float32(int); User defined types and conversions How can you convert between the types you have defined yourself? We create two types here Foo and Bar, where Bar is an alias for Foo:
type foo struct { int } type bar foo
Anonymous bar is an
struct field alias for foo
Then we:
var b bar = bar{1} var f foo = b
Declare b to be Assign b to f
a bar
Which fails on the last line with:

cannot use b (type bar) as type foo in assignment
This can be fixed with a conversion:

var f foo = foo(b)
Note that converting structures that are not identical in their fields is more difficult. Also note that converting b to a plain int also fails; an integer is not the same as a structure containing an integer.
Exercises
65
Exercises
Q18. (4) Pointer arithmetic 1. In the main text on page 58 there is the following text: there is no pointer arithmetic, so if you write: *p++, it is interpreted as
(*p)++: first dereference and then increment the value.
When you increment a value like this, for which types will it work? 2. Why doesnt it work for all types? Q19. (6) Map function with interfaces 1. Use the answer from exercise Q12, but now make it generic using interfaces. Make it at least work for ints and strings. Q20. (6) Pointers 1. Suppose we have defined the following structure:
type Person struct { name string age } int
What is the difference between the following two lines?

var p1 Person p2 := new(Person)
2. What is the difference between the following two allocations?

func Set(t *T) { x = t }
and
func Set(t T) { x= &t }
Q21. (6) Linked List 1. Make use of the package container/list to create a (double) linked list. Push the values 1, 2 and 4 to the list and then print it. 2. Create your own linked list implementation. And perform the same actions as in question 1 Q22. (6) Cat 1. Write a program which mimics the Unix program cat. For those who dont know this program, the following invocation displays the contents of the file blah:
% cat blah
2. Make it support the n flag, where each line is numbered.
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Q23. (8) Method calls 1. Suppose we have the following program: TODO: aint true anymore in Go1 (vector is gone)
package main import "container/vector" func main() { k1 := vector.IntVector{} k2 := &vector.IntVector{} k3 := new(vector.IntVector) k1.Push(2) k2.Push(3) k3.Push(4) }
What are the types of k1, k2 and k3? 2. Now, this program compiles and runs OK. All the Push operations work even though the variables are of a different type. The documentation for Push says: func (p *IntVector) Push(x int) Push appends x to the end of the vector. So the receiver has to be of type *IntVector, why does the code above work then?
Answers
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Answers
A18. (4) Pointer arithmetic 1. This will only work for pointers to point to numerical (int, uint, etc) values. 2. The ++ is only defined for numerical types and because there is no operator overloading in Go it fails (compilation error) otherwise. A19. (6) Map function with interfaces Listing 5.4. A generic map function in Go 1. package main
import "fmt" //* define the empty interface as a type type e interface{} func mult2(f e) e { switch f.(type) { case int: return f.(int) * 2 case string: return f.(string) + f.(string) + f.(string) + f.( string) } return f } func Map(n []e, f func(e) e) []e { m := make([]e, len(n)) for k, v := range n { m[k] = f(v) } return m } func main() { m := []e{1, 2, 3, 4} s := []e{"a", "b", "c", "d"} mf := Map(m, mult2) sf := Map(s, mult2) fmt.Printf("%v\n", mf) fmt.Printf("%v\n", sf) }
A20. (6) Pointers
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1. In first line: var p1 Person allocates a Person-value to p1. The type of p1 is Person. The second line: p2 := new(Person) allocates memory and assigns a pointer to p2. The type of p2 is *Person. 2. In the second function, x points to a new (heap-allocated) variable t which contains a copy of whatever the actual argument value is. In the first function, x points to the same thing that t does, which is the same thing that the actual argument points to. So in the second function, we have an extra variable containing a copy of the interesting value.
A21. (6) Linked List 1. 2. A22. (6) Cat 1. The following is implemention of cat which also supports a n flag to number each line. Listing 5.5. A cat program
package main
. 0
import ( "os" "fmt" "bufio" "flag" )
. var numberFlag = flag.Bool("n", false, "number each line") 1 . 2

func cat(r *bufio.Reader) { i := 1 for { buf, e := r.ReadBytes('\n') if e == os.EOF { break } if *numberFlag { i++ } else { }
. 3 . 4
. 5
%s", i, buf)
fmt.Fprintf(os.Stdout, "%5d
. 6
fmt.Fprintf(os.Stdout, "%s", buf)
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69
} return } func main() { flag.Parse() if flag.NArg() == 0 { cat(bufio.NewReader(os.Stdin)) } for i := 0; i < flag.NArg(); i++ { f, e := os.Open(flag.Arg(i), os.O_RDONLY, 0) if e != nil { fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "%s: error reading from %s: %s\n", os.Args[0], flag.Arg(i), e.String()) continue } cat(bufio.NewReader(f)) } }
. 0 Include all the packages we need; . 1 Define a new flag n, which defaults to off. Note that we get the help for free; . 2 Start the function that actually reads the files contents and displays it; . 3 Read one line at the time; . 4 Or stop if we hit the end; . 5 If we should number each line, print the line number and then the line itself; . 6 Otherwise we could just print the line.
A23. (8) Method calls 1. The type of k1 is vector.IntVector. Why? We use a composite literal (the {}), so we get a value of that type back. The variable k2 is of *vector.IntVector, because we take the address (&) of the composite literal. And finally k3 has also the type *vector.IntVector, because new returns a pointer to the type. 2. The answer is given in [14] in the section Calls, where among other things it says: A method call x.m() is valid if the method set of (the type of) x contains m and the argument list can be assigned to the parameter list of m. If x is addressable and &xs method set contains m, x.m() is shorthand for (&x).m(). In other words because k1 is addressable and *vector.IntVector does have the
Push method, the call k1.Push(2) is translated by Go into (&k1).Push(2) which
makes the type system happy again (and you too now you know this).d
d
Also see section Methods in this chapter.
6
The following text is from [30]. Written by Ian Lance Taylor one of the authors of Go.
Interfaces
I have this phobia about having my body penetrated surgically. You know what I mean? eXistenZ TED PIKUL
In Go, the word interface is overloaded to mean several different things. Every type has an interface, which is the set of methods defined for that type. This bit of code defines a struct type S with one field, and defines two methods for S. Listing 6.1. Defining a struct and methods on it
type S struct { i int } func (p *S) Get() int { return p.i } func (p *S) Put(v int) { p.i = v }
You can also define an interface type, which is simply a set of methods. This defines an interface I with two methods:
type I interface { Get() int Put(int) } S is a valid implementation for interface I, because it defines the two methods which I re-
quires. Note that this is true even though there is no explicit declaration that S implements I. A Go program can use this fact via yet another meaning of interface, which is an interface value:
func f(p I) {
. 0
. fmt.Println(p.Get()) 1 . p.Put(1) 2
}
. 0 Declare a function that takes an interface type as the argument; . 1 As p implements interface I it must have the Get() method; . 2 Same holds for the Put() method.
Here the variable p holds a value of interface type. Because S implements I, we can call f passing in a pointer to a value of type S:
var s S; f(&s)
Interfaces
71
The reason we need to take the address of s, rather than a value of type S, is because we defined the methods on s to operate on pointers, see the code above in listing 6.1. This is not a requirement we could have defined the methods to take values but then the Put method would not work as expected. The fact that you do not need to declare whether or not a type implements an interface means that Go implements a form of duck typing[34]. This is not pure duck typing, because when possible the Go compiler will statically check whether the type implements the interface. However, Go does have a purely dynamic aspect, in that you can convert from one interface type to another. In the general case, that conversion is checked at run time. If the conversion is invalid if the type of the value stored in the existing interface value does not satisfy the interface to which it is being converted the program will fail with a run time error. Interfaces in Go are similar to ideas in several other programming languages: pure abstract virtual base classes in C++, typeclasses in Haskell or duck typing in Python. However there is no other language which combines interface values, static type checking, dynamic run time conversion, and no requirement for explicitly declaring that a type satisfies an interface. The result in Go is powerful, flexible, efficient, and easy to write. Which is what? Lets define another type that also implements the interface I:
type R struct { i int } func (p *R) Get() int { return p.i } func (p *R) Put(v int) { p.i = v }
The function f can now accept variables of type R and S. Suppose you need to know the actual type in the function f. In Go you can figure that out by using a type switch.
func f(p I) {
. switch t := p.(type) { 0 . case *S: 1 . case *R: 2

case S: case R:
. 3 . 4
. default: 5
} }
. 0 The type switch. Use (type) in a switch statement. We store the type in the variable
t;
. 1 The actual type of p is a pointer to S; . 2 The actual type of p is a pointer to R; . 3 The actual type of p is a S; . 4 The actual type of p is a R;
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Chapter 6: Interfaces
. 5 Its another type that implements I. Using (type) outside a switch is illegal. A type switch isnt the only way to discover the type at run-time. You can also use a comma, ok form to see if an interface type implements a specific interface:
if t, ok := something.(I); ok { // something implements the interface I // t is the type it has }
When you are sure a variable implements an interface you can use:
t := something.(I)
Empty interface Since every type satisfies the empty interface: interface{}. We can create a generic function which has an empty interface as its argument: Listing 6.2. A function with an empty interface argument
func g(something interface{}) int { return something.(I).Get() }
The return something.(I).Get() is the tricky bit in this function. The value something has type interface{}, meaning no guarantee of any methods at all: it could contain any type. The .(I) is a type assertion which converts something to an interface of type I. If we have that type we can invoke the Get() function. So if we create a new variable of the type *S, we can just call g(), because *S also implements the empty interface.
s = new(S) fmt.Println(g(s));
The call to g will work fine and will print 0. If we however invoke g() with a value that does not implement I we have a problem: Listing 6.3. Failing to implement an interface
i := 5 fmt.Println(g(i))
Make
i a ``lousy'' int
This compiles, but when we run this we get slammed with:

panic: interface conversion: int is not main.I: missing method Get
Which is completely true, the built-in type int does not have a Get() method.
Methods
Methods are functions that have a receiver (see chapter 3). You can define methods on any type (except on non-local types, this includes built-in types: the type int can not have methods). You can however make a new integer type with its own methods. For example:
Methods
73
type Foo int func (self Foo) Emit() { fmt.Printf("%v", self) } type Emitter interface { Emit() }
Doing this on non-local (types defined in other packages) types yields: Listing 6.4. Failure extending built-in types
func (i int) Emit() { fmt.Printf("%d", i) } cannot define new methods on non-local type int } cannot define new methods on non-local type net.AddrError
Listing 6.5. Failure extending non-local types

func (a *net.AddrError) Emit() { fmt.Printf("%v", a)
Methods on interface types
An interface defines a set of methods. A method contains the actual code. In other words, an interface is the definition and the methods are the implementation. So a receiver can not be an interface type, doing so results in a invalid receiver type ... compiler error. The authoritative word from the language spec [14]: The receiver type must be of the form T or *T where T is a type name. T is called the receiver base type or just base type. The base type must not be a pointer or interface type and must be declared in the same package as the method. Pointers to interfaces Creating a pointer to an interface value is a useless action in Go. It is in fact illegal to create a pointer to an interface value. The release notes for the release 2010-10-13 that made them illegal leave no room for doubt: The language change is that uses of pointers to interface values no longer automatically de-reference the pointer. A pointer to an interface value is more often a beginners bug than correct code. From the [13]. If not for this restriction, this code:
var buf bytes.Buffer io.Copy(buf, os.Stdin)
would copy standard input into a copy of buf, not into buf itself. This is almost never the desired behavior.
74
Interface names
By convention, one-method interfaces are named by the method name plus the -er suffix: Reader, Writer, Formatter etc. There are a number of such names and its productive to honor them and the function names they capture. Read, Write, Close, Flush, String and so on have canonical signatures and meanings. To avoid confusion, dont give your method one of those names unless it has the same signature and meaning. Conversely, if your type implements a method with the same meaning as a method on a well-known type, give it the same name and signature; call your string-converter method String not ToString.
Text copied from [12].
A sorting example
Recall the Bubblesort exercise (Q14), where we sorted an array of integers:
func bubblesort(n []int) { for i := 0; i < len(n)-1; i++ { for j := i + 1; j < len(n); j++ { if n[j] < n[i] { n[i], n[j] = n[j], n[i] } } } }
A version that sorts strings is identical except for the signature of the function:
func bubblesortString(n []string) { /* ... */ }
Using this approach would lead to two functions, one for each type. By using interfaces we can make this more generic. Lets create a new function that will sort both strings and integers, something along the lines of this non-working example: . func sort(i []interface{}) { 0
switch i.(type) { case string: // ... case int: // ... }
. 1 . 2
. return /* ... */ 3
}
. 0 Our function will receive a slice of empty interfaces; . 1 Using a type switch we find out what the actual type is of the input; . 2 And then sort accordingly; . 3 Return the sorted slice.
A sorting example
75
But when we call this function with sort([]int{1, 4, 5}), it fails with:
cannot use i (type []int) as type []interface in function argument
This is because Go can not easily convert to a slice of interfaces. Just converting to an interface is easy, but to a slice is much more costly. To keep a long story short: Go does not (implicitly) convert slices for you. So what is the Go way of creating such a generic function? Instead of doing the type inference ourselves with a type switch, we let Go do it implicitly: The following steps are required: 1. Define an interface type (called Sorter here) with a number of methods needed for sorting. We will at least need a function to get the length of the slice, a function to compare two values and a swap function;
type Sorter interface { Len() int Less(i, j int) bool Swap(i, j int) }
The full mailing list discussion at [20]. on this subject can be found
len() as a method p[j] < p[i] as a method p[i], p[j] = p[j], p[i] as
a method
2. Define new types for the slices we want to sort. Note that we declare slice types;
type Xi []int type Xs []string
3. Implementation of the methods of the Sorter interface. For integers:

func (p Xi) Len() int func (p Xi) Swap(i int, j int) { return len(p) } { p[i], p[j] = p[j], p[i] }
func (p Xi) Less(i int, j int) bool { return p[j] < p[i] }
And for strings:

func (p Xs) Len() int func (p Xs) Swap(i int, j int) { return len(p) } { p[i], p[j] = p[j], p[i] }
func (p Xs) Less(i int, j int) bool { return p[j] < p[i] }
4. Write a generic Sort function that works on the Sorter interface. . func Sort(x Sorter) { 0 . for i := 0; i < x.Len() - 1; i++ { 1
for j := i + 1; j < x.Len(); j++ { if x.Less(i, j) { x.Swap(i, j) } } } }
. 0 x is now of the Sorter type; . 1 Using the defined functions, we implement Bubblesort.
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We can now use you generic Sort function as follows:

ints := Xi{44, 67, 3, 17, 89, 10, 73, 9, 14, 8} strings := Xs{"nut", "ape", "elephant", "zoo", "go"} Sort(ints) fmt.Printf("%v\n", ints) Sort(strings) fmt.Printf("%v\n", strings)
Listing interfaces in interfaces Take a look at the following example of an interface definition, this one is from the package container/heap:
type Interface interface { sort.Interface Push(x interface{}) Pop() interface{} }
Here another interface is listed inside the definition of heap.Interface, this may look odd, but is perfectly valid, remember that on the surface an interface is nothing more than a listing of methods. sort.Interface is also such a listing, so it is perfectly legal to include it in the interface. Introspection and reflection In the following example we want to look at the tag (here named namestr) defined in the type definition of Person. To do this we need the reflect package (there is no other way in Go). Keep in mind that looking at a tag means going back to the type definition. So we use the reflect package to figure out the type of the variable and then access the tag. Listing 6.6. Introspection using reflection .
type Person struct { name string "namestr" age } p1 := new(Person) ShowTag(p1) int
"namestr"
is the tag
new returns a pointer to Person ShowTag() is now called with this Get
pointer
func ShowTag(i interface{}) { switch t := reflect.TypeOf(i); t.Kind() { case reflect.Ptr:

type, switch on Kind()
Its
a pointer, hence a reflect.Ptr
tag := t.Elem().Field(0).Tag
. . . 1 0 2 . 0 We are dealing with a Type and according to the documentationa :

a
go doc reflect
A sorting example
77
// Elem returns a types element type. // It panics if the types Kind is not Array, Chan, Map, Ptr, or Slice.
Elem() Type
So on t we use Elem() to get the value the pointer points to; . 1 We have now dereferenced the pointer and are inside our structure. We now use
Field(0) to access the zeroth field;
. 2 The struct StructField has a Tag member which returns the tag-name as a string. So on the 0th field we can unleash .Tag to access this name: Field(0).Tag. This gives us namestr.
To make the difference between types and values more clear, that a look at the following code: Listing 6.7. Reflection and the type and value
func show(i interface{}) { switch t := i.(type) { case *Person: t := reflect.TypeOf(i) v := reflect.ValueOf(i)
. tag := t.Elem().Field(0).Tag 0
} }
Go Go
for type meta data for the actual values
. name := v.Elem().Field(0).String() 1
. 0 Here we want to get to the tag. So we need Elem() to redirect the pointer, access the first field and get the tag. Note we operate on t a reflect.Type; . 1 Now we want to get access to the value of one of the members and we employ
Elem() on v to do the redirection. Now we have arrived at the structure. Then we
go the the first field Field(0) and invoke the String() method on it.
Figure 6.1. Peeling away the layers using reflection. Going from a *Person via Elem() using the methods described in go doc reflect to get the actual string contained within.
reflect.Ptr reflect.Value
reflect.StructField
.Elem() .Field(0)
.String()
"Albert Einstein"
"Albert Einstein"
78
Setting a value works similarly as getting a value, but only works on exported members. Again some code: Listing 6.8. Reflect with private member
type Person struct { name string "namestr" age } func Set(i interface{}) { switch i.(type) { case *Person: r := reflect.ValueOf(i) r.Elem(0).Field(0).SetString("Albert Einstein") } } } } int
Listing 6.9. Reflect with public member

type Person struct { Name string "namestr" age } func Set(i interface{}) { switch i.(type) { case *Person: r := reflect.ValueOf(i) r.Elem().Field(0).SetString("Albert Einstein") int
name
Name
The code on the left compiles and runs, but when you run it, you are greeted with a stack trace and a run time error:
panic: reflect.Value.SetString using value obtained using unexported field
The code on the right works OK and sets the member Name to Albert Einstein. Of course this only works when you call Set() with a pointer argument.
Exercises
Q24. (6) Interfaces and compilation 1. The code in listing 6.3 on page 72 compiles OK as stated in the text. But when you run it youll get a runtime error, so something is wrong. Why does the code compile cleanly then? Q25. (5) Pointers and reflection 1. One of the last paragraphs in section Introspection and reflection on page 76, has the following words: The code on the right works OK and sets the member Name to Albert Einstein. Of course this only works when you call Set() with a pointer argument. Why is this the case? Q26. (7) Interfaces and max() 1. In exercise Q13 we created a max function that works on a slice of integers. The question now is to create a program that shows the maximum number and that works for both integers and floats. Try to make your program as generic as possible, although that is quite difficult in this case.
Answers
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Answers
A24. (6) Interfaces and compilation 1. The code compiles because an integer type implements the empty interface and that is the check that happens at compile time. A proper way to fix this is to test if such an empty interface can be converted and, if so, call the appropriate method. The Go code that defines the function g in listing 6.2 repeated here:
func g(any interface{}) int { return any.(I).Get() }
Should be changed to become:

func g(any interface{}) int { if v, ok := any.(I); ok { return v.Get() } return -1 } // Just so we return anything // Check if any can be converted // If so invoke Get()
If g() is called now there are no run-time errors anymore. The idiom used is called comma ok in Go. A25. (5) Pointers and reflection 1. When called with a non-pointer argument the variable is a copy (call-by-value). So you are doing the reflection voodoo on a copy. And thus you are not changing the original value, but only this copy.
A26. (7) Interfaces and max() 1. The following program calculates a maximum. It is as generic as you can get with Go. Listing 6.10. Generic way of calculating a maximum
package main
. func Less(l, r interface{}) bool { 0

switch l.(type) { case int: if _, ok := r.(int); ok {
. return l.(int) < r.(int) 1

} case float32: if _, ok := r.(float32); ok {
. return l.(float32) < r.(float32) 2

} } return false
80
} func main() { var a, b, c int = 5, 15, 0 var x, y, z float32 = 5.4, 29.3, 0.0
. if c = a; Less(a, b) { 3
c = b }
. if z = x; Less(x, y) { 4
z = y } println(c, z) }
. 0 We could have choosen to make the return type of this function a interface{}, but that would mean that a caller would always have to a type assertion to extra the actual type from the interface; . 1 All parameters are confirmed to be integers. Now perform the comparison; . 2 Parameters are float32; . 3 Get the maximum of a and b; . 4 Same for the floats.
Concurrency
Parallelism is about performance; Concurrency is about program design. Google IO 2010 ROBE PIKE
In this chapter we will show off Gos ability for concurrent programming using channels and goroutines. Goroutines are the central entity in Gos ability for concurrency. But what is a goroutine? From [12]: Theyre called goroutines because the existing terms threads, coroutines, processes, and so on convey inaccurate connotations. A goroutine has a simple model: it is a function executing in parallel with other goroutines in the same address space. It is lightweight, costing little more than the allocation of stack space. And the stacks start small, so they are cheap, and grow by allocating (and freeing) heap storage as required. A goroutine is a normal function, except that you start it with the keyword go.
ready("Tea", 2) go ready("Tea", 2)
Normal function ready() started
call as goroutine
The following idea for a program was taken from [28]. We run a function as two goroutines, the goroutines wait for an amount of time and then print something to the screen. On the lines 14 and 15 we start the goroutines. The main function waits long enough, so that both goroutines will have printed their text. Right now we wait for 5 seconds on line 17, but in fact we have no idea how long we should wait until all goroutines have exited. Listing 7.1. Go routines in action
func ready(w string, sec int) { time.Sleep(time.Duration(sec) * time.Second) fmt.Println(w, "is ready!") } func main() { go ready("Tea", 2) go ready("Coffee", 1) fmt.Println("I'm waiting") time.Sleep(5 * time.Second) }
8 9 10 11
13 14 15 16 17 18
Listing 7.1 outputs:

I'm waiting Coffee is ready! Tea is ready!
Right After After
away 1 second 2 seconds
Concurrency
83
If we did not wait for the goroutines (i.e. remove line 17) the program would be terminated immediately and any running goroutines would die with it. To fix this we need some kind of mechanism which allows us to communicate with the goroutines. This mechanism is available to us in the form of channels. A channel can be compared to a two-way pipe in Unix shells: you can send to and receive values from it. Those values can only be of a specific type: the type of the channel. If we define a channel, we must also define the type of the values we can send on the channel. Note that we must use make to create a channel:
ci := make(chan int) cs := make(chan string) cf := make(chan interface{})
Makes ci a channel on which we can send and receive integers, makes cs a channel for strings and cf a channel for types that satisfy the empty interface. Sending on a channel and receiving from it, is done with the same operator: <-. Depending on the operands it figures out what to do:
ci <- 1 <-ci i := <-ci
Send the integer 1 to the channel ci Receive an integer from the channel ci Receive from the channel ci and store it
in i
Lets put this to use. Listing 7.2. Go routines and a channel . var c chan int 0
func ready(w string, sec int) { time.Sleep(time.Duration(sec) * time.Second) fmt.Println(w, "is ready!") c <- 1 } func main() {
. 1
. c = make(chan int) 2 . go ready("Tea", 2) 3

go ready("Coffee", 1) fmt.Println("I'm waiting, but not too long")
. <-c 4 . <-c 5
}
. 0 Declare c to be a variable that is a channel of ints. That is: this channel can move integers. Note that this variable is global so that the goroutines have access to it; . 1 Send the integer 1 on the channel c; . 2 Initialize c; . 3 Start the goroutines with the keyword go; . 4 Wait until we receive a value from the channel. Note that the value we receive is discarded;
84
Chapter 7: Concurrency
. 5 Two goroutines, two values to receive. There is still some remaining ugliness; we have to read twice from the channel (lines 14 and 15). This is OK in this case, but what if we dont know how many goroutines we started? This is where another Go built-in comes in: select. With select you can (among other things) listen for incoming data on a channel. Using select in our program does not really make it shorter, because we run too few goroutines. We remove the lines 14 and 15 and replace them with the following: Listing 7.3. Using select
L: for { select { case <-c: i++ if i > 1 { break L } } }
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
We will now wait as long as it takes. Only when we have received more than one reply on the channel c will we exit the loop L. Make it run in parallel While our goroutines were running concurrently, they were not running in parallel. When you do not tell Go anything there can only be one goroutine running at a time. With runtime.GOMAXPROCS(n) you can set the number of goroutines that can run in parallel. From the documentation: GOMAXPROCS sets the maximum number of CPUs that can be executing simultaneously and returns the previous setting. If n < 1, it does not change the current setting. This call will go away when the scheduler improves. If you do not want to change any source code you can also set an environment variable GOMAXPROCS to the desired value.
More on channels
When you create a channel in Go with ch := make(chan bool), an unbuffered channel for bools is created. What does this mean for your program? For one, if you read (value := <-ch) it will block until there is data to receive. Secondly anything sending (ch<-5) will block until there is somebody to read it. Unbuffered channels make a perfect tool for synchronizing multiple goroutines. But Go allows you to specify the buffer size of a channel, which is quite simply how many elements a channel can hold. ch := make(chan bool, 4), creates a buffered channel of bools that can hold 4 elements. The first 4 elements in this channel are written without any blocking. When you write the 5th element, your code will block, until another goroutine reads some elements from the channel to make room.
Exercises
85
Although reads from channels block, you can perform a non-blocking read with the following syntax:
x, ok = <-ch
TODO Still need to test this.
Where ok is set to true when there was something to read (otherwise it is false. And if that was the case x gets the value read from the channel. In conclusion, the following is true in Go:
{
ch := make(chan type, value)
value == 0 unbuffered (blocking) value > 0 buffer value elements (non-blocking)
Closing channels
TODO section needs to be written
Exercises
Q27. (4) Channels 1. Modify the program you created in exercise Q2 to use channels, in other words, the function called in the body should now be a goroutine and communication should happen via channels. You should not worry yourself on how the goroutine terminates. 2. There are a few annoying issues left if you resolve question 1. One of the problems is that the goroutine isnt neatly cleaned up when main.main() exits. And worse, due to a race condition between the exit of main.main() and main.shower() not all numbers are printed. It should print up until 9, but sometimes it prints only to 8. Adding a second quit-channel you can remedy both issues. Do this.a Q28. (7) Fibonacci II 1. This is the same exercise as the one given page 39 in exercise 11. For completeness the complete question: The Fibonacci sequence starts as follows: mathematical terms: x1 = 1; x2 = 1; xn
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, . . . Or in = xn1 + xn2 n > 2.
Write a function that takes an int value and gives that many terms of the Fibonacci sequence. But now the twist: You must use channels.
You will need the select statement.
Answers
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Answers
A27. (4) Channels 1. A possible program is: Listing 7.4. Channels in Go
package main import "fmt" func main() { ch := make(chan int) go shower(ch) for i := 0; i < 10; i++ { ch <- i } } func shower(c chan int) { for { j := <-c fmt.Printf("%d\n", j) } }
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
13 14 15 16 17 18
We start of in the usual way, then at line 6 we create a new channel of ints. In the next line we fire off the function shower with the ch variable as it argument, so that we may communicate with it. Next we start our for-loop (lines 8-10) and in the loop we send (with <-) our number to the function (now a goroutine) shower. In the function shower we wait (as this blocks) until we receive a number (line 15). Any received number is printed (line 16) and then continue the endless loop started on line 14. 2. An answer is Listing 7.5. Adding an extra quit channel
package main import "fmt" func main() { ch := make(chan int) quit := make(chan bool) go shower(ch, quit) for i := 0; i < 10; i++ { ch <- i }
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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Chapter 7: Concurrency
quit <- false }
// or true, does not matter
12 13
func shower(c chan int, quit chan bool) { for { select { case j := <-c: fmt.Printf("%d\n", j) case <-quit: break } } }
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
On line 20 we read from the quit channel and we discard the value we read. We could have used q := <-quit, but then we would have used the variable only once which is illegal in Go. Another trick you might have pulled out of your hat may be: _ = <-quit. This is valid in Go, but the Go idiom favors the one given on line 20. A28. (7) Fibonacci II 1. The following program calculates the Fibonacci numbers using channels. Listing 7.6. A Fibonacci function in Go
package main import "fmt" func dup3(in <-chan int) (<-chan int, <-chan int, <-chan int) { a, b, c := make(chan int, 2), make(chan int, 2), make(chan int , 2) go func() { for { x := <-in a <- x b <- x c <- x } }() return a, b, c } func fib() <-chan int { x := make(chan int, 2) a, b, out := dup3(x) go func() { x <- 0 x <- 1 <-a
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for { x <- <-a+<-b } }() return out } func main() { x := fib() for i := 0; i < 10; i++ { fmt.Println(<-x) } } // See sdh33b.blogspot.com/2009/12/fibonacci-in-go.html
Communication
Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
In this chapter we are going to look at the building blocks in Go for communicating with the outside world.
Files and directories

Reading from (and writing to) files is easy in Go. This program only uses the os package to read data from the file /etc/passwd. Listing 8.1. Reading from a file (unbuffered)
package main import "os" func main() { buf := make([]byte, 1024)
. f, _ := os.Open("/etc/passwd") 0 . defer f.Close() 1

for {
. n, _ := f.Read(buf) 2 . if n == 0 { break } 3 . os.Stdout.Write(buf[:n]) 4

} }
. 0 Open the file; . 1 Make sure we close it again; . 2 Read up to 1024 bytes at the time; . 3 We have reached the end of the file; . 4 Write the contents to Stdout. If you want to use buffered IO there is the bufio package: Listing 8.2. Reading from a file (bufferd)
package main import ( "os"; "bufio")
Command line arguments
91
func main() { buf := make([]byte, 1024)
. f, _ := os.Open("/etc/passwd") 0
defer f.Close()
. r := bufio.NewReader(f) 1
w := bufio.NewWriter(os.Stdout) defer w.Flush() for { n, _ := r.Read(buf) if n == 0 { break } w.Write(buf[0:n]) } }
. 2
. 0 Open the file, os.Open returns a *os.File which implements the io.Reader interface; . 1 Turn f into a buffered Reader. NewReader expects an io.Reader, so you might think this will fail. But it does not. Anything that has such a Read() function implements this interface. And from listing 8.1 we can see that *os.File indeed does so; . 2 Read from the Reader and write to the Writer, and thus print the file to the screen. The previous program reads a file in its entirety, but a more common scenario is that you want to read a file on a line-by-line basis. The following snippet show a way to do just that:
f, _ := os.Open("/etc/passwd") defer f.Close() r := bufio.NewReader(f) s, ok := r.ReadString('\n') // ...
Read
a line from the input
holds the string, with the strings package you can parse it
A more robust method (but slightly more complicated) is ReadLine, see the documentation of the bufio package. A common scenario in shell scripting is that you want to check if a directory exists and if not, create one. Listing 8.3. Create a directory in the shell
if [ ! -e name ]; then mkdir name else # error fi }
Listing 8.4. Create a directory with Go

if f, e := os.Stat("name"); e != nil { os.Mkdir("name", 0755) } else { // error
Command line arguments

Arguments from the command line are available inside your program via the string slice os.Args, provided you have imported the package os. The flag package has a more sophisticated interface, and also provides a way to parse flags. Take this example from a DNS query tool:
92
Chapter 8: Communication
. dnssec := flag.Bool("dnssec", false, "Request DNSSEC records") 0

port := flag.String("port", "53", "Set the query port") flag.Usage = func() {
. 1
. 2
fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "Usage: %s [OPTIONS] [name ...]\n", os.Args[0])
. flag.PrintDefaults() 3
} flag.Parse()
. 4
. 0 Define a bool flag, -dnssec. The variable must be a pointer otherwise the package can not set its value; . 1 Idem, but for a port option; . 2 Slightly redefine the Usage function, to be a little more verbose; . 3 For every flag given, PrintDefaults will output the help string; . 4 Parse the flags and fill the variables.
Executing commands
The exec package has functions to run external commands, and is the premier way to execute commands from within a Go program. It works by defining a *exec.Cmd structure for which it defines a number of methods. Lets execute ls -l:
import "exec" cmd := exec.Command("/bin/ls", "-l") err := cmd.Run()
Create a Run() it
*cmd
Capturing standard output from a command is also easy to do:

import "exec" cmd := exec.Command("/bin/ls", "-l") buf, err := cmd.Output()
buf
is a ([]byte)
Networking
All network related types and functions can be found in the package net. One of the most important functions in there is Dial. When you Dial into a remote system the function returns a Conn interface type, which can be used to send and receive information. The function Dial neatly abstracts away the network family and transport. So IPv4 or IPv6, TCP or UDP can all share a common interface. Dialing a remote system (port 80) over TCP, then UDP and lastly TCP over IPv6 looks like this:a
a
In case you are wondering, 192.0.32.10 and 2620:0:2d0:200::10 are www.example.org.
Exercises
93
conn, e := Dial("tcp", "192.0.32.10:80") conn, e := Dial("udp", "192.0.32.10:80") conn, e := Dial("tcp", "[2620:0:2d0:200::10]:80")
Mandatory
brackets
If there were no errors (returned in e), you can use conn to read and write. The primitives defined in the package net are: // Read reads data from the connection. // Read can be made to time out and return a net.Error with Timeout()== true // after a fixed time limit; see SetDeadline and SetReadDeadline.
Read(b []byte)(n int, err error)
// Write writes data to the connection. // Write can be made to time out and return a net.Error with Timeout()== true // after a fixed time limit; see SetDeadline and SetWriteDeadline.
Write(b []byte)(n int, err error)
But these are the low level nooks and cranniesb , you will almost always use higher level packages. Such as the http package. For instance a simple Get for http:
package main
. import ( "io/ioutil"; "http"; "fmt" ) 0

func main() {
. r, err := http.Get("http://www.google.com/robots.txt") 1 . if err != nil { fmt.Printf("%s\n", err.String()); return } 2

b, err := ioutil.ReadAll(r.Body) r.Body.Close()
. 3
. if err == nil { fmt.Printf("%s", string(b)) } 4

}
. 0 The imports needed; . 1 Use https Get to retrieve the html; . 2 Error handling; . 3 Read the entire document into b; . 4 If everything was OK, print the document.
Exercises
Q29. (8) Processes 1. Write a program that takes a list of all running processes and prints how many child processes each parent has spawned. The output should look like:
Pid 0 has 2 children: [1 2] Pid 490 has 2 children: [1199 26524] Pid 1824 has 1 child: [7293]
b
Exercise Q33 is about using these.
94
For acquiring the process list, youll need to capture the output of ps -e -opid,ppid,comm. This output looks like:
PID 9024 19560 PPID COMMAND 9023 zsh 9024 ps
If a parent has one child you must print child, is there are more than one print children; The process list must be numerically sorted, so you start with pid 0 and work your way up. Here is a Perl version to help you on your way (or to create complete and utter confusion). Listing 8.5. Processes in Perl
#!/usr/bin/perl -l my (%child, $pid, $parent); my @ps=`ps -e -opid,ppid,comm`; foreach (@ps[1..$#ps]) { push @{$child{$parent}}, $pid; } # Walk through the sorted PPIDs foreach (sort { $a <=> $b } keys %child) { print "Pid ", $_, " has ", @{$child{$_}}+0, " child", them @{$child{$_}} == 1 ? ": " : "ren: ", "[@{$child{$_}}]"; } # Print # Capture the output from `ps` # Discard the header line # Save the child PIDs on a list
($pid, $parent, undef) = split; # Split the line, discard 'comm'
Q30. (5) Word and letter count 1. Write a small program that reads text from standard input and performs the following actions: 1. Count the number of characters (including spaces); 2. Count the number of words; 3. Count the numbers of lines. In other words implement wc(1) (check you local manual page), however you only have to read from standard input. Q31. (4) Uniq 1. Write a Go program that mimics the function of the Unix uniq command. This program should work as follows, given a list with the following items:
'a' 'b' 'a' 'a' 'a' 'c' 'd' 'e' 'f' 'g'
it should print only those item which dont have the same successor:
'a' 'b' 'a' 'c' 'd' 'e' 'f'
Listing 8.8 is a Perl implementation of the algorithm.
Exercises
95
Listing 8.8. uniq(1) in Perl

#!/usr/bin/perl my @a = qw/a b a a a c d e f g/; print my $first = shift @a; foreach (@a) { if ($first ne $_) { print; $first = $_; } }
Q32. (9) Quine
A Quine is a program that prints itself.
1. Write a Quine in Go. Q33. (8) Echo server 1. Write a simple echo server. Make it listen to TCP port number 8053 on localhost. It should be able to read a line (up to the newline), echo back that line and then close the connection. 2. Make the server concurrent so that every request is taken care of in a separate goroutine. Q34. (9) Number cruncher Pick six (6) random numbers from this list:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100

Numbers may be picked multiple times; Pick one (1) random number (i) in the range:
1 . . . 1000;
Tell how, by combining the first 6 numbers (or a subset thereof) with the operators +,, and /, you can make i; An example. We have picked the numbers: 1, 6, 7, 8, 8 and 75. And i is 977. This can be done in many different ways, one way is:
((((1 6) 8) + 75) 8) 7 = 977

or
(8 (75 + (8 6))) (7/1) = 977

1. Implement a number cruncher that works like that. Make it print the solution in a similar format (i.e. output should be infix with parenthesis) as used above. 2. Calculate all possible solutions and show them (or only show how many there are). In the example above there are 544 ways to do it. Q35. (8) *Finger daemon 1. Write a finger daemon that works with the finger(1) command. From the Debian package description: Fingerd is a simple daemon based on RFC 1196 [36] that provides an interface to the finger program at most network sites. The program is supposed to return a friendly, human-oriented status report on either the system at the moment or a particular person in depth.
Answers
97
Answers
A29. (8) Processes 1. There is lots of stuff to do here. We can divide our program up in the following sections: 1. Starting ps and capturing the output; 2. Parsing the output and saving the child PIDs for each PPID; 3. Sorting the PPID list; 4. Printing the sorted list to the screen In the solution presented below, weve opted to use container/vector to hold the PIDs. This list grows automatically. A possible program is: Listing 8.6. Processes in Go
package main import ( "fmt"; "sort"; "exec"; "strings"; "strconv"; "container/ vector") func main() { ps := exec.Command("ps", "-e", "-opid,ppid,comm") output, _ := ps.Output() child := make(map[int]*vector.IntVector) for i, s := range strings.Split(string(output), "\n") { if i == 0 } f := strings.Fields(s) fpp, _ := strconv.Atoi(f[1]) // the parent's pid fp, _ := strconv.Atoi(f[0]) // the child's pid if _, present := child[fpp]; !present { v := new(vector.IntVector) child[fpp] = v } child[fpp].Push(fp) // Save the child PIDs on a vector } schild := make([]int, len(child)) i := 0 for k, _ := range child { schild[i] = k i++ } sort.Ints(schild) for _, ppid := range schild { // Walk through the sorted list len(s) == 0 { // Kill first and last line continue
98
fmt.Printf("Pid %d has %d child", ppid, child[ppid]. Len()) if child[ppid].Len() == 1 { fmt.Printf(": %v\n", []int(*child[ppid])) } else { fmt.Printf("ren: %v\n", []int(*child[ppid])) } } }
A30. (5) Word and letter count 1. The following program is an implementation of wc(1). Listing 8.7. wc(1) in Go
package main import ( "os" "fmt" "bufio" "strings" ) func main() { var chars, words, lines int
. r := bufio.NewReader(os.Stdin) 0
for {
. switch s, ok := r.ReadString('\n'); true { 1 . case ok != nil: 2

fmt.Printf("%d %d %d\n", chars, words, lines); return default:
. 3
chars += len(s) words += len(strings.Fields(s)) lines++ } } }
. 0 Start a new reader that reads from standard input; . 1 Read a line from the input; . 2 If we received an error, we assume it was because of a EOF. So we print the current values; . 3 Otherwise we count the charaters, words and increment the lines.
A31. (4) Uniq
Answers
99
1. The following is a uniq implementation in Go. Listing 8.9. uniq(1) in Go

package main import "fmt" func main() { list := []string{"a", "b", "a", "a", "c", "d", "e", "f"} first := list[0] fmt.Printf("%s ", first) for _, v := range list[1:] { if first != v { fmt.Printf("%s ", v) first = v } } }
A32. (9) Quine 1. The following Quine is from Russ Cox:

/* Go quine */ package main import "fmt" func main() { fmt.Printf("%s%c%s%c\n", q, 0x60, q, 0x60) } var q = `/* Go quine */ package main import "fmt" func main() { fmt.Printf("%s%c%s%c\n", q, 0x60, q, 0x60) } var q = `
A33. (8) Echo server 1. A simple echo server might be: Listing 8.10. A simple echo server
package main import ( "net"; "fmt";"bufio" )
100
func main() { l, err := net.Listen("tcp", "127.0.0.1:8053") if err != nil { fmt.Printf("Failure to listen: %s\n", err.Error()) } for { if c, err := l.Accept(); err == nil { Echo(c) } } } func Echo(c net.Conn) { defer c.Close() line, err := bufio.NewReader(c).ReadString('\n') if err != nil { fmt.Printf("Failure to read: %s\n", err.Error()) return } _, err = c.Write([]byte(line)) if err != nil { fmt.Printf("Failure to write: %s\n", err.Error()) return } }
When started you should see the following:

% nc 127.0.0.1 8053 Go is *awesome* Go is *awesome*
2. To make it connection handling concurrent we only need to change one line in our echo server, the line:
if c, err := l.Accept(); err == nil { Echo(c) }
becomes:
if c, err := l.Accept(); err == nil { go Echo(c) }
A34. (9) Number cruncher 1. The following is one possibility. It uses recursion and backtracking to get an answer. Is is displayed with a smaller font, because of the size of the program. Listing 8.11. Number cruncher
package main // Need to rewrite this for append import ( "fmt" "strconv" "flag"
Answers
101
) const ( _ = 1000 * iota ADD SUB MUL DIV MAXPOS = 11 ) var mop = map[int]string{ADD: "+", SUB: "-", MUL: "*", DIV: "/"} var ( ok ) type Stack struct { i } func (s *Stack) Reset() func (s *Stack) Len() int func (s *Stack) Pop() int var found int var stack = new(Stack) func main() { flag.Parse() list := []int{1, 6, 7, 8, 8, 75, ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV} // Arg0 contains the number we should solve for magic, ok := strconv.Atoi(flag.Arg(0)) if ok != nil { return } f := make([]int, MAXPOS) solve(f, list, 0, magic) } func solve(form, numberop []int, index, magic int) { var tmp int for i, v := range numberop { if v == 0 { goto NEXT } if v < ADD { // it is a number, save it { s.i = 0 } { return s.i } { s.i--; return s.data[s.i] } int data [MAXPOS]int bool value int
func (s *Stack) Push(k int) { s.data[s.i] = k; s.i++ }
102
tmp = numberop[i] numberop[i] = 0 } form[index] = v value, ok = rpncalc(form[0 : index+1]) if ok && value == magic { if v < ADD { numberop[i] = tmp // reset and go on } found++ fmt.Printf("%s = %d //goto NEXT } if index == MAXPOS-1 { if v < ADD { numberop[i] = tmp // reset and go on } goto NEXT } solve(form, numberop, index+1, magic) if v < ADD { numberop[i] = tmp // reset and go on } NEXT: } } // convert rpn to nice infix notation and string // the r must be valid rpn form func rpnstr(r []int) (ret string) { s := make([]string, 0) // Still memory intensive for k, t := range r { switch t { case ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV: a, s := s[len(s)-1], s[:len(s)-1] b, s := s[len(s)-1], s[:len(s)-1] if k == len(r)-1 { s = append(s, b+mop[t]+a) } else { s = append(s, "("+b+mop[t]+a+")") } default: s = append(s, strconv.Itoa(t)) } } for _, v := range s { ret += v #%d\n", rpnstr(form[0: index+1]), value, found)
Answers
103
} return } // return result from the rpn form. // if the expression is not valid, ok is false func rpncalc(r []int) (int, bool) { stack.Reset() for _, t := range r { switch t { case ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV: if stack.Len() < 2 { return 0, false } a := stack.Pop() b := stack.Pop() if t == ADD { stack.Push(b + a) } if t == SUB { // disallow negative subresults if b-a < 0 { return 0, false } stack.Push(b - a) } if t == MUL { stack.Push(b * a) } if t == DIV { if a == 0 { return 0, false } // disallow fractions if b%a != 0 { return 0, false } stack.Push(b / a) } default: stack.Push(t) } } if stack.Len() == 1 { // there is only one! return stack.Pop(), true } return 0, false }
2. When starting permrec we give 977 as the first argument:
104
% ./permrec 977 1+(((6+7)*75)+(8/8)) = 977 ... ((75+(8*6))*8)-7 = 977 (((75+(8*6))*8)-7)*1 = 977 (((75+(8*6))*8)-7)/1 = 977 #1 ... #542 #543 #544
A
Contributors
Colophon
a This work was created with L TEX. The main text is set in the Google Droid fonts. All typewriter text is typeset in DejaVu Mono.
The following people have helped to make this book what it is today. Miek Gieben JC van Winkel; Mike Spook, Chinese translation. Help with proof reading, checking exercises and text improvements (no particular order and either real name or an alias): Andrey Mirtchovski, Anthony Magro, Babu Sreekanth, Ben Bullock, Bob Cunningham, Brian Fallik, Cecil New, Damian Gryski, Dan Kortschak, Filip Zaludek, Haiping Fan, Jaap Akkerhuis, JC van Winkel, Jeroen Bulten, Jinpu Hu, Jonathan Kans, Makoto Inoue, Mayuresh Kathe, Michael Stapelberg, Mike Spook, Paulo Pinto, Russel Winder, Sonia Keys, Stefan Schroeder, Thomas Kapplet, Uriel. Miek Gieben Miek Gieben has a masters degree in Computer Science from the Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands). He is involved in the development and now the deployment of the DNSSEC protocol the successor of the DNS and as such coauthored [10]. After playing with the language Erlang, Go was the first concurrent language that actually stuck with him. He fills his spare time with coding in, and writing of Go. He is the maintainer of the Go DNS library: https://github.com/ miekg/godns. He maintains a personal blog on http://www. miek.nl and tweets under the name @miekg. The postings and tweets may sometimes actually have to do something with Go.
<[email protected]> ;
License and copyright

This work is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/ 3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. All example code used in this book is hereby put in the public domain. Miek Gieben 2010, 2011.
Index
goroutines, 6 interface, 70 set of methods, 70 type, 70 value, 70 keyword break, 13, 15 continue, 16 default, 17 defer, 35 else, 14 fallthrough, 17 for, 15 go, 82 goto, 15 if, 13 import, 49 iota, 10 map, 22 add elements, 23 existence, 23 remove elements, 23 package, 48 range, 16, 23 on maps, 16, 23 on slices, 16 return, 13 select, 84 struct, 61 switch, 17 type, 61 label, 15 literal composite, 20, 60 method, 30 method call, 62 methods inherited, 63 MixedCaps, 50 named return parameters, 30 networking Dial, 92
array capacity, 20 length, 20 multidimensional, 20 buffered, 90 built-in append, 19, 22 cap, 19 close, 19 complex, 19 copy, 19, 22 delete, 19 imag, 19 len, 19 make, 19, 59 new, 19, 59 panic, 19 print, 19 println, 19 real, 19 recover, 19 channel, 83 blocking read, 84 blocking write, 84 non-blocking read, 84 non-blocking write, 84 unbuffered, 84 channels, 6, 83 closure, 35 complex numbers, 19 deferred list, 35 duck typing, 71 field, 62 anonymous, 62 fields, 61 function as values, 36 call, 62 literal, 35 literals, 36 generic, 74 goroutine, 82
Index
109
nil, 58 operator address-of, 58 and, 12 bit wise xor, 12 bitwise and, 12 clear, 12 or, 12 channel, 83 increment, 58 not, 12 or, 12 package bufio, 50, 53, 90 builtin, 18 bytes, 49 compress/gzip, 50 even, 48 exec, 54, 92 flag, 53 fmt, 19, 53 http, 54 io, 53 json, 54 os, 53 reflect, 54, 76 ring, 50 sort, 53 strconv, 53 sync, 53 template, 54 unsafe, 54 parallel assignment, 8, 15 pass-by-value, 30 private, 49 public, 49 receiver, 30 reference types, 20 runes, 16 scope local, 31 slice capacity, 20 length, 20 string literal
interpreted, 11 raw, 11 tooling go, 7 build, 8 test, 51 type assertion, 72 type switch, 71 variables _, 9 assigning, 8 declaring, 8 underscore, 9
C
[1] [2] [3] [4]
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goodmath/2009/11/googles_new_language_go.php, 2010.
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D. Crockford. The application/json media type for javascript object notation (json). http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt, 2006. Brian Kernighan Dennis Ritchie. The C programming language, 1975. Ericsson Cooperation. Erlang. http://www.erlang.se/, 1896. Larry Wall et al. Perl. http://perl.org/, 1987.
[7] [8] [9]
[10] Kolkman & Gieben. Dnssec operational practices. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4641. txt, 2006. [11] Go Authors. Defer, panic, and recover.
http://blog.golang.org/2010/08/
defer-panic-and-recover.html, 2010.
[12] Go Authors. Effective Go. http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html, 2010. [13] Go Authors. Go faq. http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html, 2010. [14] Go Authors. Go language specification. http://golang.org/doc/go_spec.html, 2010. [15] Go Authors. Go package documentation. http://golang.org/doc/pkg/, 2010. [16] Go Authors. Go release history. http://golang.org/doc/devel/release.html, 2010. [17] Go Authors. Go tutorial. http://golang.org/doc/go_tutorial.html, 2010. [18] Go Authors. Go website. http://golang.org/, 2010. [19] Go Authors. Getting Started. http://golang.org/doc/install/, 2012. [20] Go Community. Function accepting a slice of interface types. http://groups.google. com/group/golang-nuts/browse_thread/thread/225fad3b5c6d0321, 2010. [21] Go Community. Go issue 65: Compiler cant spot guaranteed return in if statement. http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=65, 2010. [22] James Gosling et al. Java. http://oracle.com/java/, 1995. [23] LAMP Group at EPFL. Scala. http://www.scala-lang.org/, 2003.
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Learning Go

Author: Miek Gieben

Thanks to: Go Authors, Google

Miek Gieben 2010 - 2012

Learning Go has been translated into: Chinese, by Mike Spook: Russian, by :

Methods . . . . . Interface names . A sorting example Exercises . . . . . Answers . . . . .

82 More on channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 90 90 91 92 92 93 97

106 Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 License and copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 108 110

List of Code Examples

List of Code Examples

Settings used in this book

Are displayed like this;

When the term

on the internet use instead of plain go.

http://golang.org/doc/ itself is served by a Go program called godoc.

35 lines 242 lines

Figure 1.1. Chronology of Go

Then retrieve the latest release (= Go 1) source code:

Getting Go for Windows

. // Implements formatted I/O. 1

. /* Print something */ 2 . func main() { 3 . 4

Compiling and running code

This results in a executable called helloworld.

Settings used in this book

Variables, types and keywords

Listing 2.3. Declaration with :=

Variables, types and keywords

integer type integer type

Illegal mixing of 5 is a (typeless)

these types constant, so this is OK

Gives the error on the assignment on line 7:

You may also explicitly type a constant, if you need that:

first char. to 'c', this is an error

To do this in Go you will need the following:

Variables, types and keywords

This is transformed into:

Which is not valid syntax, you need to write:

Rune is an alias for int.

will print: (5+5i)

Operators and built-in functions

Table 2.1. Operator precedence Precedence Highest Operator(s)

Table 2.2. Keywords in Go

is like C's NULL

of err is limited to if's body

This section is copied from [12].

if true && true } if ! false {

Syntax wise the following is illegal in Go:

be on the same line as the if

word on a line ending with a colon is a label

Like a C for(;;) (endless loop)

for sum = sum + i

ceases to exist after the loop

this loop, making it only print 0 to 5

it breaks the j-loop, not the i one

the rest of the remaining code in the loop

. // do what you want with k and v 2

Cases can be presented in comma-separated lists.

Table 2.3. Predefined functions in Go

Arrays, slices and maps