Let's Go ---- Rob Pike ---- (September 14, 2008) This document is a tutorial introduction to the basics of the Go systems programming language, intended for programmers familiar with C or C++. It is not a comprehensive guide to the language; at the moment the document closest to that is the draft specification: /doc/go_lang.html To check out the compiler and tools and be ready to run Go programs, see /doc/go_setup.html The presentation proceeds through a series of modest programs to illustrate key features of the language. All the programs work (at time of writing) and are checked in at /doc/progs Program snippets are annotated with the line number in the original file; for cleanliness, blank lines remain blank. Hello, World ---- Let's start in the usual way: --PROG progs/helloworld.go Every Go source file declares which package it's part of using a "package" statement. The "main" package's "main" function is where the program starts running (after any initialization). Function declarations are introduced with the "func" keyword. Notice that string constants can contain Unicode characters, encoded in UTF-8. Go is defined to accept UTF-8 input. Strings are arrays of bytes, usually used to store Unicode strings represented in UTF-8. The built-in function "print()" has been used during the early stages of development of the language but is not guaranteed to last. Here's a better version of the program that doesn't depend on "print()": --PROG progs/helloworld2.go This version imports the ''os'' package to acess its "Stdout" variable, of type "*OS.FD". The "import" statement is a declaration: it names the identifier ("OS") that will be used to access members of the package imported from the file ("os"), found in the current directory or in a standard location. Given "OS.Stdout" we can use its "WriteString" method to print the string. The comment convention is the same as in C++: /* ... */ // ... Echo ---- Next up, here's a version of the Unix utility "echo(1)": --PROG progs/echo.go It's still fairly small but it's doing a number of new things. In the last example, we saw "func" introducing a function. The keywords "var", "const", and "type" (not used yet) also introduce declarations, as does "import". Notice that we can group declarations of the same sort into parenthesized, semicolon-separated lists if we want, as on lines 3-6 and 10-13. But it's not necessary to do so; we could have said const Space = " " const Newline = "\n" Semicolons aren't needed here; in fact, semicolons are unnecessary after any top-level declaration, even though they are needed as separators within a parenthesized list of declarations. Having imported the "Flag" package, line 8 creates a global variable to hold the value of echo's -n flag. (The nil hides a nice feature not needed here; see the source in "src/lib/flag.go" for details). In "main.main", we parse the arguments (line 16) and then create a local string variable we will use to build the output. The declaration statement has the form var s string = ""; This is the "var" keyword, followed by the name of the variable, followed by its type, followed by an equals sign and an initial value for the variable. Go tries to be terse, and this declaration could be shortened. Since the string constant is of type string, we don't have to tell the compiler that. We could write var s = ""; or we could go even shorter and write the idiom s := ""; The := operator is used a lot in Go to represent an initializing declaration. (For those who know Limbo, its := construct is the same, but notice that Go has no colon after the name in a full "var" declaration.) And there's one in the "for" clause on the next line: --PROG progs/echo.go /for/ The "Flag" package has parsed the arguments and left the non-flag arguments in a list that can be iterated over in the obvious way. The Go "for" statement differs from that of C in a number of ways. First, it's the only looping construct; there is no "while" or "do". Second, there are no parentheses on the clause, but the braces on the body are mandatory. (The same applies to the "if" statement.) Later examples will show some other ways "for" can be written. The body of the loop builds up the string "s" by appending (using +=) the flags and separating spaces. After the loop, if the "-n" flag is not set, it appends a newline, and then writes the result. Notice that "main.main" is a niladic function with no return type. It's defined that way. Falling off the end of "main.main" means ''success''; if you want to signal erroneous return, use sys.exit(1) The "sys" package is built in and contains some essentials for getting started; for instance, "sys.argc()" and "sys.argv(int)" are used by the "Flag" package to access the arguments. An Interlude about Types ---- Go has some familiar types such as "int" and "float", which represent values of the ''appropriate'' size for the machine. It also defines specifically-sized types such as "int8", "float64", and so on, plus unsigned integer types such as "uint", "uint32", etc. And then there is a "byte" synonym for "uint8", which is the element type for strings. Speaking of "string", that's a built-in type as well. Strings are immutable values -- they are not just arrays of "byte" values. Once you've built a string value, you can't change it, although of course you can change a string variable simply by reassigning it. This snippet from "strings.go" is legal code: --PROG progs/strings.go /hello/ /ciao/ However the following statements are illegal because they would modify a "string" value: s[0] = 'x'; (*p)[1] = 'y'; In C++ terms, Go strings are a bit like "const strings", while pointers to strings are analogous to "const string" references. Yes, there are pointers. However, Go simplifies their use a little; read on. Arrays are declared like this: var array_of_int [10]int; Arrays, like strings, are values, but they are mutable. This differs from C, in which "array_of_int" would be usable as a pointer to "int". In Go, since arrays are values, it's meaningful (and useful) to talk about pointers to arrays. The size of the array is part of its type; however, one can declare an open array variable, to which one can assign any array value with the same element type. (At the moment, only pointers to open arrays are implemented.) Thus one can write this function (from "sum.go"): --PROG progs/sum.go /sum/ /^}/ and invoke it like this: --PROG progs/sum.go /1,2,3/ Note how the return type ("int") is defined for "sum()" by stating it after the parameter list. Also observe that although the argument is a pointer to an array, we can index it directly ("a[i]" not "(*a)[i]"). The expression "[]int{1,2,3}" -- a type followed by a brace-bounded expression -- is a constructor for a value, in this case an array of "int". We pass it to "sum()" by taking its address. The built-in function "len()" appeared there too - it works on strings, arrays, and maps, which can be built like this: m := map[string] int {"one":1 , "two":2} At least for now, maps are always pointers, so in this example "m" has type "*map[string]int". This may change. You can also create a map (or anything else) with the built-in "new()" function: m := new(map[string] int) The "new()" function always returns a pointer, an address for the object it creates. An Interlude about Constants ---- Although integers come in lots of sizes in Go, integer constants do not. There are no constants like "0ll" or "0x0UL". Instead, integer constants are evaluated as ideal, large-precision values that can overflow only when they are assigned to an integer variable with too little precision to represent the value. const hard_eight = (1 << 100) >> 97 // legal There are nuances that deserve redirection to the legalese of the language specification but here are some illustrative examples: var a uint64 = 0 // a has type uint64, value 0 a := uint64(0) // equivalent; uses a "conversion" i := 0x1234 // i gets default type: int var j int = 1e6 // legal - 1000000 is representable in an int x := 1.5 // a float i3div2 = 3/2 // integer division - result is 1 f3div2 = 3./2. // floating point division - result is 1.5 Conversions only work for simple cases such as converting ints of one sign or size to another, and between ints and floats, plus a few other simple cases. There are no automatic conversions of any kind in Go, other than that of making constants have concrete size and type when assigned to a variable. An I/O Package ---- Next we'll look at a simple package for doing file I/O with the usual sort of open/close/read/write interface. Here's the start of "fd.go": --PROG progs/fd.go /package/ /^}/ The first line declares the name of the package -- "fd" for ''file descriptor'' -- and then we import the low-level, external "syscall" package, which provides a primitive interface to the underlying operating system's calls. Next is a type definition: the "type" keyword introduces a type declaration, in this case a data structure called "FD". To make things a little more interesting, our "FD" includes the name of the file that the file descriptor refers to. The "export" keyword makes the declared structure visible to users of the package. Now we can write what is often called a factory: --PROG progs/fd.go /NewFD/ /^}/ This returns a pointer to a new "FD" structure with the file descriptor and name filled in. We can use it to construct some familiar, exported variables of type "*FD": --PROG progs/fd.go /export.var/ /^.$/ The "NewFD" function was not exported because it's internal. The proper factory to use is "Open": --PROG progs/fd.go /func.Open/ /^}/ There are a number of new things in these few lines. First, "Open" returns multiple values, an "FD" and an "errno" (Unix error number). We declare the multi-value return as a parenthesized list of declarations. "Syscall.open" also has a multi-value return, which we can grab with the multi-variable declaration on line 27; it declares "r" and "e" to hold the two values, both of type "int64" (although you'd have to look at the "syscall" package to see that). Finally, line 28 returns two values: a pointer to the new "FD" and the return code. If "Syscall.open" failed, the file descriptor "r" will be negative and "NewFD" will return "nil". Now that we can build "FDs", we can write methods to use them. To declare a method of a type, we define a function to have an explicit receiver of that type, placed in parentheses before the function name. Here are some methods for "FD", each of which declares a receiver variable "fd". --PROG progs/fd.go /Close/ END There is no implicit "this" and the receiver variable must be used to access members of the structure. Methods are not declared within the "struct" declaration itself. The "struct" declaration defines only data members. Finally, we can use our new package: --PROG progs/helloworld3.go and run the program: % helloworld3 hello, world can't open file; errno=2 % Rotting cats ---- Building on the FD package, here's a simple version of the Unix utility "cat(1)", "progs/cat.go": --PROG progs/cat.go By now this should be easy to follow, but the "switch" statement introduces some new features. Like a "for" loop, an "if" or "switch" can include an initialization statement. The "switch" on line 12 uses one to create variables "nr" and "er" to hold the return values from "fd.Read()". (The "if" on line 19 has the same idea.) The "switch" statement is general: it evaluates the cases from top to bottom looking for the first case that matches the value; the case expressions don't need to be constants or even integers, as long as they all have the same type. Since the "switch" value is just "true", we could leave it off -- as is also true in a "for" statement, a missing value means "true". In fact, such a "switch" is a form of "if-else" chain. Line 19 calls "Write()" by slicing (a pointer to) the array, creating a reference slice. Now let's make a variant of "cat" that optionally does "rot13" on its input. It's easy to do by just processing the bytes, but instead we will exploit Go's notion of an interface. The "cat()" subroutine uses only two methods of "fd": "Read()" and "Name()", so let's start by defining an interface that has exactly those two methods. Here is code from "progs/cat_rot13.go": --PROG progs/cat_rot13.go /type.Reader/ /^}/ Any type that implements the two methods of "Reader" -- regardless of whatever other methods the type may also contain -- is said to implement the interface. Since "FD.FD" implements these methods, it implements the "Reader" interface. We could tweak the "cat" subroutine to accept a "Reader" instead of a "*FD.FD" and it would work just fine, but let's embellish a little first by writing a second type that implements "Reader", one that wraps an existing "Reader" and does "rot13" on the data. To do this, we just define the type and implement the methods and with no other bookkeeping, we have a second implementation of the "Reader" interface. --PROG progs/cat_rot13.go /type.Rot13/ /end.of.Rot13/ (The "rot13" function called on line 39 is trivial and not worth reproducing.) To use the new feature, we define a flag: --PROG progs/cat_rot13.go /rot13_flag/ and use it from within a mostly unchanged "cat()" function: --PROG progs/cat_rot13.go /func.cat/ /^}/ Lines 53 and 54 set it all up: If the "rot13" flag is true, wrap the "Reader" we received into a "Rot13" and proceed. Note that the interface variables are values, not pointers: the argument is of type "Reader", not "*Reader", even though under the covers it holds a pointer to a "struct". Here it is in action: 
	% echo abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz | ./cat
	abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
	% echo abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz | ./cat --rot13
	nopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklm
	%
Fans of dependency injection may take cheer from how easily interfaces made substituting the implementation of a file descriptor. Interfaces are a distinct feature of Go. An interface is implemented by a type if the type implements all the methods declared in the interface. This means that a type may implement an arbitrary number of different interfaces. There is no type hierarchy; things can be much more ad hoc, as we saw with "rot13". "FD.FD" implements "Reader"; it could also implement a "Writer", or any other interface built from its methods that fits the current situation. Consider the empty interface 
	type interface Empty {}
Every type implements the empty interface, which makes it useful for things like containers. Sorting ---- As another example of interfaces, consider this simple sort algorithm, taken from "progs/sort.go": --PROG progs/sort.go /func.Sort/ /^}/ The code needs only three methods, which we wrap into "SortInterface": --PROG progs/sort.go /interface/ /^}/ We can apply "Sort" to any type that implements "len", "less", and "swap". The "sort" package includes the necessary methods to allow sorting of arrays of integers, strings, etc.; here's the code for arrays of "int": --PROG progs/sort.go /type.*IntArray/ /swap/ And now a routine to test it out, from "progs/sortmain.go". This uses a function in the "sort" package, omitted here for brevity, to test that the result is sorted. --PROG progs/sortmain.go /func.ints/ /^}/ If we have a new type we want to be able to sort, all we need to do is to implement the three methods for that type, like this: --PROG progs/sortmain.go /type.Day/ /swap/ Prime numbers ---- Now we come to processes and communication -- concurrent programming. It's a big subject so to be brief we assume some familiarity with the topic. A classic program in the style is the prime sieve of Eratosthenes. It works by taking a stream of all the natural numbers, and introducing a sequence of filters, one for each prime, to winnow the multiples of that prime. At each step we have a sequence of filters of the primes so far, and the next number to pop out is the next prime, which triggers the creation of the next filter in the chain. Here's a flow diagram; each box represents a filter element whose creation is triggered by the first number that flowed from the elements before it.
     
To create a stream of integers, we use a Go channel, which, borrowing from CSP's descendants, represents a communications channel that can connect two concurrent computations. In Go, channel variables are always pointers to channels -- it's the object they point to that does the communication. Here is the first function in "progs/sieve.go": --PROG progs/sieve.go /Send/ /^}/ The function "Generate" sends the sequence 2, 3, 4, 5, ... to its argument channel, "ch", using the binary communications operator "<-". Channels block, so if there's no recipient for the the value on "ch", the send operation will wait until one becomes available. The "Filter" function has three arguments: an input channel, an output channel, and a prime number. It copies values from the input to the output, discarding anything divisible by the prime. The unary communications operator "<-" (receive) retrieves the next value on the channel. --PROG progs/sieve.go /Copy/ /^}/ The generator and filters execute concurrently. Go has its own model of process/threads/light-weight processes/coroutines, so to avoid notational confusion we'll call concurrently executing computations in Go goroutines. To start a goroutine, invoke the function, prefixing the call with the keyword "go"; this starts the function running in parallel with the current computation but in the same address space: go sum(huge_array); // calculate sum in the background If you want to know when the calculation is done, pass a channel on which it can report back: ch := new(chan int); go sum(huge_array, ch); // ... do something else for a while result := <-ch; // wait for, and retrieve, result Back to our prime sieve. Here's how the sieve pipeline is stitched together: --PROG progs/sieve.go /func.main/ /^}/ Line 23 creates the initial channel to pass to "Generate", which it then starts up. As each prime pops out of the channel, a new "Filter" is added to the pipeline and its output becomes the new value of "ch". The sieve program can be tweaked to use a pattern common in this style of programming. Here is a variant version of "Generate", from "progs/sieve1.go": --PROG progs/sieve1.go /func.Generate/ /^}/ This version does all the setup internally. It creates the output channel, launches a goroutine internally using a function literal, and returns the channel to the caller. It is a factory for concurrent execution, starting the goroutine and returning its connection. The same change can be made to "Filter": --PROG progs/sieve1.go /func.Filter/ /^}/ The "Sieve" function's main loop becomes simpler and clearer as a result, and while we're at it let's turn it into a factory too: --PROG progs/sieve1.go /func.Sieve/ /^}/ Now "main"'s interface to the prime sieve is a channel of primes: --PROG progs/sieve1.go /func.main/ /^}/ Multiplexing ---- With channels, it's possible to serve multiple independent client goroutines without writing an actual multiplexer. The trick is to send the server a channel in the message, which it will then use to reply to the original sender. A realistic client-server program is a lot of code, so here is a very simple substitute to illustrate the idea. It starts by defining "Request" type, which embeds a channel that will be used for the reply. --PROG progs/server.go /type.Request/ /^}/ The server will be trivial: it will do simple binary operations on integers. Here's the code that invokes the operation and responds to the request: --PROG progs/server.go /type.BinOp/ /^}/ The "Server" routine loops forever, receiving requests and, to avoid blocking due to a long-running operation, starting a goroutine to do the actual work. --PROG progs/server.go /func.Server/ /^}/ We construct a server in a familiar way, starting it up and returning a channel to connect to it: --PROG progs/server.go /func.StartServer/ /^}/ Here's a simple test. It starts a server with an addition operator, and sends out lots of requests but doesn't wait for the reply. Only after all the requests are sent does it check the results. --PROG progs/server.go /func.main/ /^}/ One annoyance with this program is that it doesn't exit cleanly; when "main" returns there are a number of lingering goroutines blocked on communication. To solve this, we provide a second, "quit" channel to the server: --PROG progs/server1.go /func.StartServer/ /^}/ It passes the quit channel to the "Server" function, which uses it like this: --PROG progs/server1.go /func.Server/ /^}/ Inside "Server", a "select" statement chooses which of the multiple communications listed by its cases can proceed. If all are blocked, it waits until one can proceed; if multiple can proceed, it chooses one at random. In this instance, the "select" allows the server to honor requests until it receives a quit message, at which point it returns, terminating its execution. All that's left is to strobe the "quit" channel at the end of main: --PROG progs/server1.go /adder,.quit/ ... --PROG progs/server1.go /quit....true/ There's a lot more to Go programming and concurrent programming in general but this quick tour should give you some of the basics.