How to make fmt.Scanln() read into a slice of integers - go

Question

I have a line containing 3 numbers that I want to read from stdin with fmt.Scanln() but this code won't work:
X := make([]int, 3)
fmt.Scanln(X...)
fmt.Printf("%v\n", X)
I get this error message:
cannot use X (type []int) as type []interface {} in function argument
I don't get it.

Answer 1

Idiomatic Go would be:
func read(n int) ([]int, error) {
in := make([]int, n)
for i := range in {
_, err := fmt.Scan(&in[i])
if err != nil {
return in[:i], err
}
}
return in, nil
}
interface{} means nothing. Please don't use it if you don't have to.

Answer 2

For example,
package main
import "fmt"
func intScanln(n int) ([]int, error) {
x := make([]int, n)
y := make([]interface{}, len(x))
for i := range x {
y[i] = &x[i]
}
n, err := fmt.Scanln(y...)
x = x[:n]
return x, err
}
func main() {
x, err := intScanln(3)
if err != nil {
fmt.Println(err)
return
}
fmt.Printf("%v\n", x)
}
Input:
1 2 3
Output:
[1 2 3]

Answer 3

I think the the correct version should be
X := make([]int, 3)
fmt.Scanln(&X[0], &X[1], &X[2])
fmt.Printf("%v\n", X)

Answer 4

This error message occurs b/c there's no reasonable way to convert []int to []interface{}. Note, this is in reference to a slice. So the syntax your using is correct, but fmt.Scanln expects []interface{}. This has implications outside of pkg fmt.
The reason I've seen given for this is due to Go giving you control over memory layout so it currently has no reasonable way to do the slice conversion. This means you'll need to do the conversion manually before passing it to a function expecting the slice of a given type. For example:
package main
import (
"fmt"
)
func main() {
x := make([]int, 3)
y := make([]interface{}, 3)
y[0] = x[0]
y[1] = x[1]
y[2] = x[2]
fmt.Println(y...)
}
Or something a little more general:
x := make([]int, 3)
y := make([]interface{}, len(x))
for i, v := range x {
y[i] = v
}
fmt.Println(y...)
Regarding your specific issue, see the following:
x := make([]*int, 3)
for i := range x {
x[i] = new(int)
}
y := make([]interface{}, 3)
for i, v := range x {
y[i] = v
}
if _, err := fmt.Scanln(y...); err != nil {
fmt.Println("Scanln err: ", err)
}
for _, v := range y {
val := v.(*int)
fmt.Println(*val)
}

Answer 5

I saw in a comment you said the lines can have different lengths. In that case
you can implement your own fmt.Scanner:
package main
import (
"bytes"
"fmt"
)
type slice struct {
tok []int
}
func (s *slice) Scan(state fmt.ScanState, verb rune) error {
tok, err := state.Token(false, func(r rune) bool { return r != '\n' })
if err != nil { return err }
if _, _, err := state.ReadRune(); err != nil {
if len(tok) == 0 {
panic(err)
}
}
b := bytes.NewReader(tok)
for {
var d int
_, err := fmt.Fscan(b, &d)
if err != nil { break }
s.tok = append(s.tok, d)
}
return nil
}
func main() {
var s slice
fmt.Scan(&s)
fmt.Println(s.tok)
}
https://golang.org/pkg/fmt#Scanner