I have a slice that I have to place 5 groupings of entries in.
I have to order everything relative to a one of the groups. So for example there is the base grouping and then each additional group placement is decided by a boolean, so true it needs to be appended or false prepended.
I can do this through a long and nasty looking block of if...else statements, but wondering if there is a better way I can do this semantically? Or an alternative method I should be using for the conditional that can help with this (each grouping can be of a couple or thousands of individual related entries that would be spread out). The final result needs to be a slice, as input into the configuration struct where it lives needs to be a slice.
func buildNewRoutesQueue(overrideGroup1 bool, overrideGroup2 bool, overrideGroup3 bool, overrideGroup4 bool, baseRoutes []*route.Route) []*route.Route {
var result []*route.Route
if overrideGroup1 {
result = append(routes.GetGroup1Routes(), baseRoutes...)
} else {
result = append(baseRoutes, routes.GetGroup1Routes()...)
}
if overrideGroup1 {
result = append(routes.GetGroup2Routes(), result...)
} else {
result = append(result, routes.GetGroup2Routes()...)
}
if overrideGroup3 {
result = append(routes.GetGroup3Routes(), result...)
} else {
result = append(result, routes.GetGroup3Routes()...)
}
if overrideGroup4 {
result = append(routes.GetGroup4Routes(), result...)
} else {
result = append(result, routes.GetGroup4Routes()...)
}
return result
}
Are there any performance issues here, and is there a better semantic way of doing this than what Im thinking? I can replace the boolean conditional with anything, its not set in stone.
I'm trying to implement a default value according to the option 1 of the post Golang and default values. But when I try to do go install the following error pops up in the terminal:
not enough arguments in call to test.Concat1
have ()
want (string)
Code:
package test
func Concat1(a string) string {
if a == "" {
a = "default-a"
}
return fmt.Sprintf("%s", a)
}
// other package
package main
func main() {
test.Concat1()
}
Thanks in advance.
I don't think what you are trying to do will work that way. You may want to opt for option #4 from the page you cited, which uses variadic variables. In your case looks to me like you want just a string, so it'd be something like this:
func Concat1(a ...string) string {
if len(a) == 0 {
return "a-default"
}
return a[0]
}
Go does not have optional defaults for function arguments.
You may emulate them to some extent by having a special type
to contain the set of parameters for a function.
In your toy example that would be something like
type Concat1Args struct {
a string
}
func Concat1(args Concat1Args) string {
if args.a == "" {
args.a = "default-a"
}
return fmt.Sprintf("%s", args.a)
}
The "trick" here is that in Go each type has its respective
"zero value", and when producing a value of a composite type
using the so-called literal, it's possible to initialize only some of the type's fields, so in our example that would be
s := Concat1(Concat1Args{})
vs
s := Concat1(Concat1Args{"whatever"})
I know that looks clumsy, and I have showed this mostly for
demonstration purpose. In real production code, where a function
might have a dozen of parameters or more, having them packed
in a dedicate composite type is usually the only sensible way
to go but for a case like yours it's better to just explicitly
pass "" to the function.
Golang does not support default parameters. Accordingly, variadic arguments by themselves are not analogous. However, variadic functions with the use of error handling can 'resemble' the pattern. Try the following as a simple example:
package main
import (
"errors"
"log"
)
func createSeries(p ...int) ([]int, error) {
usage := "Usage: createSeries(<length>, <optional starting value>), length should be > 0"
if len(p) == 0 {
return nil, errors.New(usage)
}
n := p[0]
if n <= 0 {
return nil, errors.New(usage)
}
var base int
if len(p) == 2 {
base = p[1]
} else if len(p) > 2 {
return nil, errors.New(usage)
}
vals := make([]int, n)
for i := 0; i < n; i++ {
vals[i] = base + i
}
return vals, nil
}
func main() {
answer, err := createSeries(4, -9)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
log.Println(answer)
}
Default parameters work differently in Go than they do in other languages. In a function there can be one ellipsis, always at the end, which will keep a slice of values of the same type so in your case this would be:
func Concat1(a ...string) string {
but that means that the caller may pass in any number of arguments >= 0. Also you need to check that the arguments in the slice are not empty and then assign them yourself. This means they do not get assigned a default value through any kind of special syntax in Go. This is not possible but you can do
if a[0] == "" {
a[0] = "default value"
}
If you want to make sure that the user passes either zero or one strings, just create two functions in your API, e.g.
func Concat(a string) string { // ...
func ConcatDefault() string {
Concat("default value")
}
I am new to go language, under learning. I have years OOP experience in C++. There is a stacker interface that is written in go and two implementations of it, one is slice base stack and another one is linkedlist base.
I find it is hard to compare two different structures and tell if they are containing the same data or not. The simple example code list below (notice a lot of functions/implementations are not listed because they are not relative with this question). The key function is stackEquals, I have tried different ways to approach it but they failed. Please see the comments in the code.
package main
import (
"fmt"
"errors"
)
// The interface is fixed, cannot be modified
type Stacker interface {
isEmpty() bool
size() int
push(x int)
peek() (int, error)
pop() (int, error)
copy() Stacker
}
type StackSlice struct {
slice []int
}
type StackLinked struct {
next *StackLinked
value int
// possible with other variables that is not relative
}
// There are interface function/method implementations did not paste
func (s StackSlice) String() string {
// return all the value inside the stack as string
// like [5 4]
}
func (s StackLinked) String() string {
// return all the value inside the stack as string
// like [5 4]]
}
// Pre-condition:
// none
// Post-condition:
// returns true if s and t have the same elements in the same order;
// both s and t have the same value after calling stackEquals as before
// Annoying constraint:
// Use only Stackers in the body of this functions: don't use arrays,
// slices, or any container other than a Stacker.
func stackEquals(s, t Stacker) bool {
// This implementation below always return false unless they are the same thing
return s == t
// I tried return s.String() == t.String() but gave an error said interface doesn't have String() method.
}
How can I compare two stacks that implemented in different way and tell if they are the same (same means same values in same order) in the stack.
If you need to compare two interfaces, you can only use the methods in that interface, so in this case, String does not exist in the interface (even though both of your implementations have it, the interface itself does not).
A possible implementation would be:
func stackEquals(s, t Stacker) bool {
// if they are the same object, return true
if s == t {
return true
}
// if they have different sizes or the next element is not the same,
// then they are different
if s.size() != t.size() || s.peek() != t.peek() {
return false
}
// they could be the same, so let's copy them so that we don't mess up
// the originals
ss = s.copy()
tt = t.copy()
// iterate through the values and check if each one is
// the same. If not, return false
for ; i, err := ss.pop(); err == nil {
if j, err := tt.pop(); err != nil || i != j {
return false
}
}
return true
}
This assumes that the only error pop would get is when there are no more values, otherwise you will need to do some better error checking and use isEmpty.
I know I can iterate over a map m with
for k, v := range m { ... }
and look for a key, but is there a more efficient way of testing for a key's existence in a map?
Here's how you check if a map contains a key.
val, ok := myMap["foo"]
// If the key exists
if ok {
// Do something
}
This initializes two variables. val is the value of "foo" from the map if it exists, or a "zero value" if it doesn't (in this case the empty string). ok is a bool that will be set to true if the key existed.
If you want, you can shorten this to a one-liner.
if val, ok := myMap["foo"]; ok {
//do something here
}
Go allows you to put an initializing statement before the condition (notice the semicolon) in the if statement. The consequence of this is that the scope ofval and ok will be limited to the body of the if statement, which is helpful if you only need to access them there.
In addition to The Go Programming Language Specification, you should read Effective Go. In the section on maps, they say, amongst other things:
An attempt to fetch a map value with a key that is not present in the
map will return the zero value for the type of the entries in the map.
For instance, if the map contains integers, looking up a non-existent
key will return 0. A set can be implemented as a map with value type
bool. Set the map entry to true to put the value in the set, and then
test it by simple indexing.
attended := map[string]bool{
"Ann": true,
"Joe": true,
...
}
if attended[person] { // will be false if person is not in the map
fmt.Println(person, "was at the meeting")
}
Sometimes you need to distinguish a missing entry from a zero value.
Is there an entry for "UTC" or is that 0 because it's not in the map
at all? You can discriminate with a form of multiple assignment.
var seconds int
var ok bool
seconds, ok = timeZone[tz]
For obvious reasons this is called the “comma ok” idiom. In this
example, if tz is present, seconds will be set appropriately and ok
will be true; if not, seconds will be set to zero and ok will be
false. Here's a function that puts it together with a nice error
report:
func offset(tz string) int {
if seconds, ok := timeZone[tz]; ok {
return seconds
}
log.Println("unknown time zone:", tz)
return 0
}
To test for presence in the map without worrying about the actual
value, you can use the blank identifier (_) in place of the usual
variable for the value.
_, present := timeZone[tz]
Searched on the go-nuts email list and found a solution posted by Peter Froehlich on 11/15/2009.
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
dict := map[string]int {"foo" : 1, "bar" : 2}
value, ok := dict["baz"]
if ok {
fmt.Println("value: ", value)
} else {
fmt.Println("key not found")
}
}
Or, more compactly,
if value, ok := dict["baz"]; ok {
fmt.Println("value: ", value)
} else {
fmt.Println("key not found")
}
Note, using this form of the if statement, the value and ok variables are only visible inside the if conditions.
Short Answer
_, exists := timeZone[tz] // Just checks for key existence
val, exists := timeZone[tz] // Checks for key existence and retrieves the value
Example
Here's an example at the Go Playground.
Longer Answer
Per the Maps section of Effective Go:
An attempt to fetch a map value with a key that is not present in the map will return the zero value for the type of the entries in the map. For instance, if the map contains integers, looking up a non-existent key will return 0.
Sometimes you need to distinguish a missing entry from a zero value. Is there an entry for "UTC" or is that the empty string because it's not in the map at all? You can discriminate with a form of multiple assignment.
var seconds int
var ok bool
seconds, ok = timeZone[tz]
For obvious reasons this is called the “comma ok” idiom. In this example, if tz is present, seconds will be set appropriately and ok will be true; if not, seconds will be set to zero and ok will be false. Here's a function that puts it together with a nice error report:
func offset(tz string) int {
if seconds, ok := timeZone[tz]; ok {
return seconds
}
log.Println("unknown time zone:", tz)
return 0
}
To test for presence in the map without worrying about the actual value, you can use the blank identifier (_) in place of the usual variable for the value.
_, present := timeZone[tz]
Have a look at this snippet of code
nameMap := make(map[string]int)
nameMap["river"] = 33
v ,exist := nameMap["river"]
if exist {
fmt.Println("exist ",v)
}
As noted by other answers, the general solution is to use an index expression in an assignment of the special form:
v, ok = a[x]
v, ok := a[x]
var v, ok = a[x]
var v, ok T = a[x]
This is nice and clean. It has some restrictions though: it must be an assignment of special form. Right-hand side expression must be the map index expression only, and the left-hand expression list must contain exactly 2 operands, first to which the value type is assignable, and a second to which a bool value is assignable. The first value of the result of this special form will be the value associated with the key, and the second value will tell if there is actually an entry in the map with the given key (if the key exists in the map). The left-hand side expression list may also contain the blank identifier if one of the results is not needed.
It's important to know that if the indexed map value is nil or does not contain the key, the index expression evaluates to the zero value of the value type of the map. So for example:
m := map[int]string{}
s := m[1] // s will be the empty string ""
var m2 map[int]float64 // m2 is nil!
f := m2[2] // f will be 0.0
fmt.Printf("%q %f", s, f) // Prints: "" 0.000000
Try it on the Go Playground.
So if we know that we don't use the zero value in our map, we can take advantage of this.
For example if the value type is string, and we know we never store entries in the map where the value is the empty string (zero value for the string type), we can also test if the key is in the map by comparing the non-special form of the (result of the) index expression to the zero value:
m := map[int]string{
0: "zero",
1: "one",
}
fmt.Printf("Key 0 exists: %t\nKey 1 exists: %t\nKey 2 exists: %t",
m[0] != "", m[1] != "", m[2] != "")
Output (try it on the Go Playground):
Key 0 exists: true
Key 1 exists: true
Key 2 exists: false
In practice there are many cases where we don't store the zero-value value in the map, so this can be used quite often. For example interfaces and function types have a zero value nil, which we often don't store in maps. So testing if a key is in the map can be achieved by comparing it to nil.
Using this "technique" has another advantage too: you can check existence of multiple keys in a compact way (you can't do that with the special "comma ok" form). More about this: Check if key exists in multiple maps in one condition
Getting the zero value of the value type when indexing with a non-existing key also allows us to use maps with bool values conveniently as sets. For example:
set := map[string]bool{
"one": true,
"two": true,
}
fmt.Println("Contains 'one':", set["one"])
if set["two"] {
fmt.Println("'two' is in the set")
}
if !set["three"] {
fmt.Println("'three' is not in the set")
}
It outputs (try it on the Go Playground):
Contains 'one': true
'two' is in the set
'three' is not in the set
See related: How can I create an array that contains unique strings?
var d map[string]string
value, ok := d["key"]
if ok {
fmt.Println("Key Present ", value)
} else {
fmt.Println(" Key Not Present ")
}
var empty struct{}
var ok bool
var m map[string]struct{}
m = make(map[string]struct{})
m["somestring"] = empty
_, ok = m["somestring"]
fmt.Println("somestring exists?", ok)
_, ok = m["not"]
fmt.Println("not exists?", ok)
Then, go run maps.go
somestring exists? true
not exists? false
It is mentioned under "Index expressions".
An index expression on a map a of type map[K]V used in an assignment
or initialization of the special form
v, ok = a[x]
v, ok := a[x]
var v, ok = a[x]
yields an additional untyped boolean value. The value of ok is true if
the key x is present in the map, and false otherwise.
A two value assignment can be used for this purpose. Please check my sample program below
package main
import (
"fmt"
)
func main() {
//creating a map with 3 key-value pairs
sampleMap := map[string]int{"key1": 100, "key2": 500, "key3": 999}
//A two value assignment can be used to check existence of a key.
value, isKeyPresent := sampleMap["key2"]
//isKeyPresent will be true if key present in sampleMap
if isKeyPresent {
//key exist
fmt.Println("key present, value = ", value)
} else {
//key does not exist
fmt.Println("key does not exist")
}
}
Example usage: Looping through a slice, for pairMap checking if key exists.
It an algorithm to find all pairs that adds to a specific sum.
func findPairs(slice1 []int, sum int) {
pairMap := make(map[int]int)
for i, v := range slice1 {
if valuei, ok := pairMap[v]; ok {
fmt.Println("Pair Found", i, valuei)
} else {
pairMap[sum-v] = i
}
}
}
In some languages it's necessary or cleaner to do iteration by providing a callback function that receives items and returns a boolean that indicates whether to continue or stop the iteration.
Which is the preferred value to indicate desire to stop/continue? Why? What precedents exist?
Example in Go:
func IntSliceEach(sl []int, cb func(i int) (more bool)) (all bool) {
for _, i := range sl {
if !cb(i) {
return false
}
}
return true
}
Which is the preferred value to indicate desire to stop/continue?
true for continue
Why?
Example 1:
func example(i interface{}) {
if w, ok := i.(io.Writer); ok {
// do something with your writer, ok indicates that you can continue
}
}
Example 2:
var sum int = 0
it := NewIntStatefulIterator(int_data)
for it.Next() {
sum += it.Value()
}
In both cases true (ok) indicates that you should continue. So I assume that it would be way to go in your example.
Foreword: The following answer applies to a callback function which decides based on the current item(s) whether the loop should terminate early - this is what you asked.
This is not to be confused with a function that progresses and reports if there are more elements to process, where a true return value is generally accepted to signal that there are more elements (for which a good example is Scanner.Scan()), and whose typical use is:
scanner := bufio.NewScanner(input)
for scanner.Scan() {
// Process current item (line):
line := scanner.Text()
fmt.Println(line) // Do something with line
}
Sticking to bool return type
Usually returning true to indicate termination results in code that is easier to read. This is due to the nature of for: if you do nothing, for continues, so you have to explicitly break if you want to terminate early, so having a clean termination condition is more common.
But it's a matter of taste. You may go whichever you like, but what's important is to name your callback function in a meaningful way that will clearly state what its return value means, and thus looking at the code (the condition in which it is used) will be easily understandable.
For example the following names are good and the return value is unambiguous:
// A return value of true means to terminate
func isLast(item Type) bool
func terminateAfter(item Type) bool
func abort(item Type) bool
// A return value of true means to continue (not to terminate)
func keepGoing(item Type) bool
func carryOn(item Type) bool
func processMore(item Type) bool
Using these results in easily understandable code:
for i, v := range vals {
doSomeWork()
if terminateAfter(v) {
break // or return
}
}
for i, v := range vals {
doSomeWork()
if !keepGoing(v) {
break // or return
}
}
// Or an alternative to the last one (subjective which is easier to read):
for i, v := range vals {
doSomeWork()
if keepGoing(v) {
continue
}
break
}
As negative examples, the following callback function names are bad as you can't guess what their return value mean:
// Bad: you can't tell what return value of true means just by its name:
func test(item Type) bool
func check(item Type) bool
Having error return type
It's also common for the callback to not just test but also do some work with the passed item. In these cases it is meaningful to return an error instead of a bool. Doing so, obviously the nil return value indicates success (and to continue), and a non-nil value indicates error and that processing should stop.
func process(item Type) error
for i, v := range vals {
if err := process(v); err != nil {
// Handle error and terminate
break
}
}
Having enum-like return value
Also if multiple return values have meaning, you may choose to define constants for return values, which you can name meaningfully.
type Action int
const (
ActionContinue Action = iota
ActionTerminate
ActionSkip
)
func actionToTake(item Type) Action
for i, v := range vals {
switch actionToTake(v) {
case ActionSkip:
continue
case ActionTerminate:
return
}
doSomeWork()
}