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{.epigraph}

I am interested in this and hope to do something.

Quote: On adding complex numbers to Go, Ken Thompson

In this chapter we will look at the basic building blocks of the Go programming language.

Hello World

In the Go tutorial, you get started with Go in the typical manner: printing "Hello World" (Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie started this when they presented the C language in the 1970s). That's a great way to start, so here it is, "Hello World" in Go.

<{{src/basics/helloworld.go}}

Lets look at the program line by line. This first line is just required <<1>>. All Go files start with package <something>, and package main is required for a standalone executable.

import "fmt" says we need fmt in addition to main <<2>>. A package other than main is commonly called a library, a familiar concept in many programming languages (see (#packages)). The line ends with a comment that begins with //.

Next we another comment, but this one is enclosed in /* */ <<3>>. 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>>.

Finally 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 <<5>>.

Compiling and Running Code

To build a Go program, use the go tool.(!tooling,go) To build helloworld we just enter:

% go build helloworld.go

(!tooling,go build) This results in an executable called helloworld. (!tooling,go run)

% ./helloworld
Hello, world.

You can combine the above and just call go run helloworld.go.

Variables, Types and Keywords

In the next few sections we will look at the variables, basic types, keywords, and control structures of our new language.

Go is different from (most) other languages in that the type of a variable is specified after the variable name. So not: int a, but a int. When you declare 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. (!variables,declaring) (!variables,assigning)

var a int                           a := 15
var b bool                          b := false
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 (see (#constants)) and import also allow this. Note the use of parentheses instead of braces:

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(!variables, parallel assignment) a, b := 20, 16. This makes a and b both integer variables and assigns 20 to a and 16 to b.

A special name for a variable is _. (!variables,underscore) Any value assigned to it is discarded (it's similar to /dev/null on Unix). 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.

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 most of the well-known types such as int. The int type has the appropriate length for your machine, meaning that on a 32-bit machine it is 32 bits and on a 64-bit machine it is 64 bits. Note: an int is either 32 or 64 bits, no other values are defined. Same goes for uint, the unsigned int.

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 that these types are all distinct and assigning variables which mix these types is a compiler error, like in the following code:

<{{src/basics/types.go}}

We declare two different integers, a and b where a is an int and b is an int32. We want to set b to the sum of a and a. This fails and gives the error: cannot use a + a (type int) as type int32 in assignment. Adding the constant 5 to b does succeed, because constants are not typed.

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(!keywords, iota) ^[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." [@iota]] to enumerate values.

const (
    a = iota
    b
)

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. Or, as shown here, you can even let Go repeat the use of iota. You may also explicitly type a constant: const b string = "0". Now b is a string type constant.

Strings

Another important 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 cannot be changed: strings in Go are immutable. If you are coming from C, note that the following is not legal in Go:

var s string = "hello"
s[0] = 'c'

To do this in Go you will need the following:

s := "hello"
c := []rune(s)	    //<<1>>
c[0] = 'c'	        //<<2>>
s2 := string(c)     //<<3>>
fmt.Printf("%s\n", s2) //<<4>>

Here we convert s to an array of runes <<1>>. We change the first element of this array <<2>>. Then we create a new string s2 with the alteration <<3>>. Finally, we print the string with fmt.Printf <<4>>.

Runes

Rune is an alias for int32. It is an UTF-8 encoded code point. When is this type useful? (!runes) One example is when you're iterating over characters in a string. You could loop over each byte (which is only equivalent to a character when strings are encoded in 8-bit ASCII, which they are not in Go!). But to get the actual characters you should use the rune type.

Complex Numbers

Go has native support for complex numbers. To use them you need a variable of type complex128 (64 bit real and imaginary parts) or complex64 (32 bit real and imaginary parts). Complex numbers are written as re + im$i$, where re is the real part, im is the imaginary part and $i$ is the literal '$i$' ($\sqrt{-1}$).

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. var e error creates a variable e of type error with the value nil. This error type is an interface -- we'll look more at interfaces in (#interfaces). For now you can just assume that error is a type just like all other types.

Operators and Built-in Functions

Go supports the normal set of numerical operators. See (#tab-op-precedence) for lists the current ones and their relative precedence. They all associate from left to right.

{#tab-op-precedence} {{tab/precedence.md}}

+ - * / and % all do what you would expect, & | ^ and &^ are bit operators for bitwise and(!operators, bitwise and) bitwise or(!operators, bitwise or) bitwise xor(!operators, bit wise xor) and bit clear (!operators, bitwise clear) respectively. The && and || operators are logical and (!operators, and) and logical or (!operators, or) Not listed in the table is the logical not (!operators, 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

Let's start looking at keywords, (#tab-keywords) lists all the keywords in Go.

{#tab-keywords} {{tab/keywords.md}}

We've seen some of these already. We used var and const in the (#variables-types-and-keywords) section, and we briefly looked at package and import in our "Hello World" program at the start of the chapter. Others need more attention and have their own chapter or section:

  • func is used to declare functions and methods.
  • return is used to return from functions. We'll look at both func and return in detail in (#functions).
  • go is used for concurrency. We'll look at this in (#channels).
  • select used to choose from different types of communication, We'll work with select in (#channels).
  • interface is covered in (#interfaces).
  • struct is used for abstract data types. We'll work with struct in (#beyond-the-basics).
  • type is also covered in (#beyond-the-basics).

Control Structures

There are only a few control structures in Go. To write loops we use the for keyword, and there is a switch and of course an if. When working with channels select will be used (see (#channels)). Parentheses are not required around the condition, and the body must always be brace-delimited.

If-Else

In Go an if (!keywords, if) looks like this:

if x > 0 {
    return y
} else {
    return x
}

(!keywords,return) (!keywords,else) Since if and switch accept an initialization statement, it's common to see one used to set up a (local) variable.

if err := SomeFunction(); err == nil {
    // do something
} else {
    return err
}

It is idomatic in Go to omit the else when the if statement's body has a break, continue, return or, goto, so the above code would be better written as:

if err := SomeFunction(); err != nil {
    return err
}
// do something

The opening brace on the first line must be positioned on the same line as the if statement. There is no arguing about this, because this is what gofmt outputs.

Goto

Go has a goto (!keywords, goto) statement - use it wisely. With goto you jump to a (!label) label which must be defined within the current function. For instance, a loop in disguise:

func myfunc() {
    i := 0
Here:
    fmt.Println(i)
    i++
    goto Here
}

The string Here: indicates a label. A label does not need to start with a capital letter and is case sensitive.

For

The Go for (!keywords, for) loop has three forms, only one of which has semicolons:

  • for init; condition; post { } - a loop using the syntax borrowed from C;
  • for condition { } - a while loop, and;
  • for { } - an 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 = sum + i
}

Note that the variable i ceases to exist after the loop.

Break and Continue

With break (!keywords, break) you can quit loops early. By itself, break breaks the current loop.

for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
    if i > 5 {
    break //<<1>>
    }
    fmt.Println(i) //<<2>>
}

Here we break the current loop <<1>>, and don't continue with the fmt.Println(i) statement <<2>>. So we only print 0 to 5. With loops within loop you can specify a label after break to identify which loop to stop:

J:  for j := 0; j < 5; j++ { //<<1>>
        for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
            if i > 5 {
                break J //<<2>>
            }
            fmt.Println(i)
        }
    }

Here we define a label "J" <<1>>, preceding the for-loop there. When we use break J <<2>>, we don't break the inner loop but the "J" loop.

With continue (!keywords, continue) you begin the next iteration of the loop, skipping any remaining code. In the same way as break, continue also accepts a label.

Range

The keyword range (!keywords, range) can be used for loops. It can loop over slices, arrays, strings, maps and channels (see (#channels)). range is an iterator that, when called, returns the next 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: (!keywords, range)

list := []string{"a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f"}
for k, v := range list {
    // do something with k and v
}

First we create a slice of strings. Then we use range to loop over them. With each iteration, range will return the index as an int and the key as a string. It will start with 0 and "a", so k will be 0 through 5, and v will be "a" through "f".

You can also use range on strings directly. Then it will break out the individual Unicode characters ^[In the UTF-8 world characters are sometimes called runes (!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. In this case the type of char is rune. and their start position, by parsing the UTF-8. The loop: (!keywords,range)

for pos, char := range "Gő!" {
    fmt.Printf("character '%c' starts at byte position %d\n", char, pos)
}

prints

character 'G' starts at byte position 0
character 'ő' starts at byte position 1
character '!' starts at byte position 3

Note that ő took 2 bytes, so '!' starts at byte 3.

Switch

Go's switch (!keywords, switch) is very flexible; you can match on much more than just integers. The cases are evaluated top to bottom until a match is found, and if the switch has no expression it switches on true. It's therefore possible -- and idiomatic -- to write an if-else-if-else chain as a switch.

// Convert hexadecimal character to an int value
switch { //<<1>>
case '0' <= c && c <= '9': //<<2>>
    return c - '0' //<<3>>
case 'a' <= c && c <= 'f': //<<4>>
    return c - 'a' + 10
case 'A' <= c && c <= 'F': //<<5>>
    return c - 'A' + 10
}
return 0

A switch without a condition is the same as switch true <<1>>. We list the different cases. Each case statement has a condition that is either true of false. Here <<2>> we check if c is a number. If c is a number we return its value <<3>>. Check if c falls between "a" and "f" <<4>>. For an "a" we return 10, for "b" we return 11, etc. We also do the same <<5>> thing for "A" to "F".

There is no automatic fall through, you can use fallthrough (!keywords, fallthrough) for that.

switch i {
    case 0:  fallthrough
    case 1: //<<1>>
        f()
    default:
        g() //<<2>>

f() can be called when i == 0 <<1>>. With default (!keywords, default) you can specify an action when none of the other cases match. Here g() is called when i is not 0 or 1 <<2>>. We could rewrite the above example as:

switch i {
    case 0, 1: //<<1>>
        f()
    default:
        g()

You can list cases on one line <<1>>, separated by commas.

Built-in Functions

A few functions are predefined, meaning you don't have to include any package to get access to them. (#tab-predef-functions) lists them all.^[You can use the command godoc builtin to read the online documentation about the built-in types and functions.]

{#tab-predef-functions} {{tab/functions.md}}

These built-in functions are documented in the builtin (!package,builtin) pseudo package that is included in recent Go releases. Let's go over these functions briefly.

close : is used in channel communication. It closes a channel. We'll learn more about this in (#channels). (!built-in,close)

delete : is used for deleting entries in maps. (!built-in,delete)

len and cap : are used on a number of different types, len is used to return the lengths of strings, maps, slices, and arrays. In the next section (#arrays) we'll look at slices, arrays and the function cap.(!built-in,len)(!built-in,cap)

new : is used for allocating memory for user defined data types. See (#allocation-with-new). (!built-in,new)

make : is used for allocating memory for built-in types (maps, slices, and channels). See (#allocation-with-make). (!built-in,make)

copy, append : copy is for copying slices. (!built-in,copy) And append is for concatenating slices. See (#slices) in this chapter. (!built-in,append)

panic, recover : are used for an exception mechanism. See (#panic-and-recovering) for more. (!built-in,panic) (!built-in,recover)

print, println : are low level printing functions that can be used without reverting to the fmt (!package,fmt) package. These are mainly used for debugging. (!built-in,print)built-in,println)

complex, real, imag : all deal with complex numbers. (!complex numbers) We will not use complex numbers in this book. (!built-in,complex) (!built-in,real) (!built-in,imag)

Arrays, Slices, and Maps

To store multiple values in a list, you can use 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. To assign or index an element in the array, you use square brackets:

var arr [10]int
arr[0] = 42
arr[1] = 13
fmt.Printf("The first element is %d\n", arr[0])

Array types like var arr [10]int have a fixed size. The size is part of the type. They can't 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.

(!array,multidimensional) To declare an array you can use the following: var a [3]int. To initialize it to something other than zero, use a composite literal (!literal, composite) a := [3]int{1, 2, 3}. This can be shortened to a := [...]int{1, 2, 3}, where Go counts the elements automatically.

A> A composite literal allows you A> to assign a value directly to an array, slice, or map. A> See (#constructors-and-composite-literals) for more information.

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. When using multidimensional arrays, you can use the following syntax: a := [2][2]int{ {1,2}, {3,4} }. Now that you know about arrays you will be delighted to learn that you will almost never use them in Go, because there is something much more flexible: slices.

Slices

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.(!reference types)

A> Reference types are created with make. We detail this further A> in (#beyond-the-basics).

That 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: slice := make([]int, 10), you create a slice which can hold ten elements. Note that the underlying array isn't specified. A slice is always coupled to an array that has a fixed size. For slices we define a capacity (!slice,capacity) and a length (!slice,length) The image below shows the creation of an array, then the creation of a slice. 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[:n] . And now we have:

  • len(slice) == n
  • cap(slice) == m
  • len(array) == cap(array) == m

!--- Array versus slice !--- Figure: An array versus a slice.

Given an array, or another slice, a new slice is created via a[n:m]. This creates a new slice which refers to the variable a, starts at index n, and ends before index m. It has length n - m.

a := [...]int{1, 2, 3, 4, 5} //<<1>>
s1 := a[2:4] //<<2>>
s2 := a[1:5] //<<3>>
s3 := a[:]   //<<4>>
s4 := a[:4]  //<<5>>
s5 := s2[:] //<<6>>
s6 := a[2:4:5] //<<7>>

First we define <<1>> an array with five elements, from index 0 to 4. From this we create <<2>> a slice with the elements from index 2 to 3, this slices contains: 3, 4. Then we we create another slice <<3>> from a: with the elements from index 1 to 4, this contains: 2, 3, 4, 5. With a[:] <<4>> we create a slice with all the elements in the array. This is a shorthand for: a[0:len(a)]. And with a[:4] <<5>> we create a slice with the elements from index 0 to 3, this is short for: a[0:4], and gives us a slices that contains: 1, 2, 3, 4. With s2[:] we create a slice from the slice s2 <<6>>, note that s5 still refers to the array a. Finally, we create a slice with the elements from index 3 to 3 and also set the cap to 4 <<7>>.

When working with slices you can overrun the bounds, consider this code.

<{{src/basics/array-and-slices.go}}

At <<1>> we create an array with a 100 elements, indexed from 0 to 99. Then at <<2>> we create a slice that has index 0 to 98. We assign 1 to the 99th element <<3>> of the slice. This works as expected. But at <<4>> we dare to do the impossible, and and try to allocate something beyond the length of the slice and we are greeted with a runtime error: Error: "throw: index out of range".

If you want to extend a slice, there are a couple of built-in functions that make life easier: append and copy. The append function appends zero or more values to a slice and returns the result: a slice with the same type as the original. If the original slice isn't big enough to fit the added values, append will allocate a new slice that is big enough. So the slice returned by append may refer to a different underlying array than the original slice does. Here's an example: (!built-in,append)

s0 := []int{0, 0}
s1 := append(s0, 2) //<<1>>
s2 := append(s1, 3, 5, 7) //<<2>>
s3 := append(s2, s0...) //<<3>>

At <<1>> we append a single element, making s1 equal to []int{0, 0, 2}. At <<2>> we append multiple elements, making s2 equal to []int{0, 0, 2, 3, 5, 7}. And at <<3>> we append a slice, giving us s3 equal to []int{0, 0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 0, 0}. Note the three dots used after s0...! This is needed make it clear explicit that you're appending another slice, instead of a single value.

The copy function copies slice elements from a source to a destination, and returns the number of elements it copied. This number is the minimum of the length of the source and the length of the destination. For example: (!built-in,copy)

var a = [...]int{0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}
var s = make([]int, 6)
n1 := copy(s, a[0:]) //<<1>>
n2 := copy(s, s[2:]) //<<2>>

After <<1>>, n1 is 6, and s is []int{0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5}. And after <<2>>, n2 is 4, and s is []int{2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 5}.

Maps

Many other languages have a type similar to maps built-in. For instance, Perl has hashes, Python has its dictionaries, and C++ also has maps (as part of the libraries). In Go we have the map (!keywords, map) type. A map can be thought of as an array indexed by strings (in its most simple form).

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, //<<1>>
}

The general syntax for defining a map is map[<from type>]<to type>. Here, we define a map that converts from a string (month abbreviation) to an int (number of days in that month). Note that the trailing comma at <<1>> is required.

Use make when only declaring a map: monthdays := make(map[string]int). A map is a reference type.

For indexing ("searching") 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 (!keywords, range) clause will help you again, it returns the key and corresponding value with each invocation.

year := 0
for _, days := range monthdays //<<1>>
    year += days
}
fmt.Printf("Numbers of days in a year: %d\n", year)

At <<1>> we use the underscore to ignore (assign to nothing) the key returned by range. We are only interested in the values from monthdays.

(!keywords, map adding elements)

To add elements to the map, you would add new month with: monthdays["Undecim"] = 30. If you use a key that already exists, the value will be silently overwritten: monthdays["Feb"] = 29. To test for existence (!keywords, map existence) you would use the following: value, present := monthdays["Jan"]. If the key "Jan" exists, present will be true. It's more Go like to name present "ok", and use: v, ok := monthdays["Jan"]. In Go we call this the "comma ok" form.

You can remove elements (!keywords, map remove elements) from the map: delete(monthdays, "Mar") ^[Always rainy in March anyway.]. In general the syntax delete(m, x) will delete the map entry retrieved by the expression m[x].

Exercises

{{ex/basics/ex.md}}