Nesting Structs

Last time I learned about how to use pointers in GO to pass strutcts to functions. Today, I figure out if there is anything I should know about nesting a struct within another struct. Read More…

Structs and Pointers


Last time I mentioned that GO passes parameters by value, so modifying a struct within a function takes extra work. If my structs are large, there may be memory pressure as a result of creating copies in functions. That's where passing a pointer to a struct can help. That's what I tackle this time. Read More…

Structs in GO

I've learned about maps and slices in GO. However, they can only hold items of uniform types. Today, I dive into learning about structs which can hold a combination of different types.


Structs




Structs are a common data structure in many programming languages and are useful for managing real-world records and related information of different types. The syntax is also similar to that of other languages.

var name struct {
variable type
variable type
variable type

}


You can have any number of variables in a struct. Like other things in GO, the default values are the appropriate zero values for the data types. Here is an example:



Screen Shot 2021-06-28 at 8.38.26 AM


Assigning Values to a Struct




In order to set values you use the dot operator.


Screen Shot 2021-06-28 at 8.41.36 AM


This is similar to how other programming languages do it, as well.


Type Definition



If I need more than one record based on aStruct, I can either repeat the definition of the struct, or I can create a new type based on it. I can then declare variables based on the type. So, declare once, use often. Here is the syntax for a defined type based on a struct.


Screen Shot 2021-06-28 at 8.49.04 AM


This looks like the same code. There is one major difference: the type keyword replaces the var keyword. Once defined this way, I can declare variables based on the type:

Screen Shot 2021-06-28 at 8.54.41 AM



Structs and Functions



Being a type, I can pass a struct into a function as an argument.


Screen Shot 2021-06-28 at 9.06.00 AM



One thing I need to remember is that GO passes parameters by value, so modifying a struct within a function takes extra work. It's better to treat GO functions as pure functions and return a modified copy.

There is an issue. If my structs are large, there may be memory pressure as a result of creating copies in functions. That's where passing a pointer to to a struct can help.

I'll tackle that next time.




Iterating Maps

Last time I learned about maps in GO and how to create, change, and delete them. Today, I go over iterating over a map. Read More…

Maps

Today I begin to look at GO's dictionary structure which is called a "map".

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Variadic Functions

Today I delve into functions that can take any number of arguments, variadic functions.

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Command-Line Arguments

Today I learn about processing command-line arguments in GO. Read More…

Slices

Today I dive into something called a "slice" in GO. A slice is a collection that can change size to accommodate a changing number of elements. Arrays in GO are fixed to the size they are declared.

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Reading Files Into Arrays

Last time I learned how to read a text file. I continue my investigation of reading text files by loading a file full of numbers into an array. Along the way I learn about converting numbers. Read More…

Reading Text Files

I read a lot of text, and other, filed. Today, I want to tackle a common function, so to speak. How to read a text file. Read More…

Arrays In GO

I'm done with GO packages for now. I want to get back to the core language. Today I learn about arrays. Read More…

More on Packages

Last time I learned about writing and importing my own packages. This time, I want to learn about installing and publishing packages.

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Packages

In one of the first posts I wondered why fmt.Println() used a lowercase fmt and an uppercase Println. In this post I dive into GO packages which answer the question. Read More…

The Point of Pointers

Last time I learned about GO functions and parameters. Today, I want to learn about addresses and pointers in GO.

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More On Printing & Functions

Today I'm going to cover formatting output in GO, as well as functions. Read More…

Things To Remember & For Loops

Going through the GO docs and a couple of my books, I've come across a couple things I need to remember when dealing with the scope of variables.

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More Useful Functions

Last time I learned about using the time package, substring replacement, and getting user input. I learned functions can return more than one value, including an error. Today, I look into handling returned errors and the if statement. I'll also tackle casting strings to numbers. Read More…

Useful Functions

Today, I want to go over a few useful functions.
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Installation & Basic Commands

Last time, I looked at variables and variable naming. This time I'm gong to install GO and then look at compiling and running programs.

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Variables and Variable Names

In this post I'm going to focus on more basics of the GO language, data types and variables. Read More…

Strings, Runes, and Unicode

This time I'd like to cover some things fairly quickly. These should get me comfortable with the basics of GO. As I mentioned last time, I saw a lot of similarities between GO and Java (and similar languages). I'm hoping this will get me up and running quickly. Read More…

Up and Running

The first thing I want to do in learning about Go is to find out why people like it. Read More…

Welcome to my journey to learn the Go

Welcome to my journey to learn the Go programming language in 2021. Why? I enjoy programming languages. I’ve “collected” languages since I first got introduced to them via APL and FORTAN, yes I’m an old dude. Also, I’m a programmer, and why not? Read More…

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