CODEWITHSUNDEEP
goinitializationslice
lf215
lf215

Reputation: 1009

difference between slice declaration and initialization

What is the difference between a and b? I know that reflect.DeepEqual considers them not equal and I know that a is nil. Are there built in functions that easily show the difference?

var a []foo
b := []foo{}

Upvotes: 2

Views: 486

Answers (2)

VonC
VonC

Reputation: 1323633

The zero value for a makes it nil.

nil for pointers, functions, interfaces, slices, channels, and maps.

As opposed to b, which is initialized as a short declaration.

Upvotes: 2

Ainar-G
Ainar-G

Reputation: 36189

fmt.Println(a == nil, b == nil)

prints true false (Playground: http://play.golang.org/p/E0nQP8dVyE). a is a nil slice, while b is just an empty slice. There isn't a lot of difference in practice, but usually, say in a function that queries a database, a nil slice means no result (due to error or something else), while an empty slice - that it could not find the information.

For the difference on the lower level, see Russ Cox's Go Data Structures article.

Upvotes: 3

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