Arrays are collection of similar items that share a common name. A common scenario would be a case where you want to store student’s scores in an exam.

Array Declaration

var score 3[int]

The above can be read as – Score is an array of type integer that can hold a maximum of 3 records. Can you guess what should be the output of the below program?

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
	var score [3]int
	fmt.Println(score)
}

Output

[0 0 0]

The output is 0 for each of the 3 elements of the array. What does this output signify?

It simply reflects that once you declare an Array variable it is initialized with 0 value by default. This is in line with Go programming behavior in case of other types like integer, float and string etc.

Assigning to & Retrieving Values from an Array

Declaring:                     var score [3]int

Assigning:                    score[0] = 75

Note: Array index starts at 0

Retrieving:                    fmt.Println(score[0])

A sample code follows:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
	var score [3]int
	
	score[0] = 75
	score[1] = 80
	score[2] = 67
	
	fmt.Println(score[0])
	fmt.Println(score)
}

Output

75
[75 80 67]

Slices

Go’s simple Arrays are fixed length, rigid and practically of little use. That’s the reason we’ve Slices in Go that are dynamic in nature and can grow or shrink as per the requirement.

Remember : Unlike Arrays which are Value Types, Slices are Reference Types. 

Using Slices

The simplest way to declare a slice is:

var score [ ] int

It’s similar to an Array declaration with a little difference that the length of the array is not defined. As shown in the following example, there’re 3 ways of declaring and using a Slice.

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {

//Varibales can be created and assigned in the follwoing three ways

	var firstVar []int
	firstVar = []int{23,21,22}
	
	secVar := make([]int, 5)
	secVar = []int{10,13,11}
	
	thirdVar := []int{75,80,67}
	
	fmt.Println("First Var=",firstVar)
	fmt.Println("Second Var=",secVar)
	fmt.Println("Third Var=",thirdVar)
}

Play with the above code

Output

First Var= [23 21 22]
Second Var= [10 13 11]
Third Var= [75 80 67]

As seen in the above code sample:

thirdVar := []int{75,80,67}

A simple and short way of declaring & assigning a slice.

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {

	score := []int{55,87,11,63,74}
        reSliced := score[0:2]

	fmt.Println(reSliced)
	fmt.Println(score[0:2])
 	fmt.Println(score[:2])//'start_index' not mentioned, default=0
	fmt.Println(score[3:])//'end_index' not mentioned, default= maxlength
	fmt.Println(score[:])
}

[55 87]
[55 87]
[55 87]
[63 74]
[55 87 11 63 74]

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Basant Singh

Basant is a talented software developer who is very engaged in web & cloud platforms on a daily basis. He is a contributor to codingthis.com reporting on various news and troubleshooting on various platforms. Basant is very strong in SQL and a great asset to the CodingThis community.

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