Store value in an array

Question

I am fairly new to Go. I have coded in JavaScript where I could do this:

var x = [];
x[0] = 1;

This would work fine. But in Go, I am trying to implement the same thing with Go syntax. But that doesn't help. I need to have a array with unspecified index number.

I did this:

var x []string
x[0] = "name"

How do I accomplish that?

Answer 1

When you type:

var x []string

You create a slice, which is similar to an array in Javascript. But unlike Javascript, a slice has a set length and capacity. In this case, you get a nil slice which has the length and capacity of 0.

A few examples of how you can do it:

x := []string{"name"}   // Creates a slice with length 1

y := make([]string, 10) // Creates a slice with length 10
y[0] = "name"           // Set the first index to "name". The remaining 9 will be ""

var z []string          // Create an empty nil slice
z = append(z, "name")   // Appends "name" to the slice, creating a new slice if required

More indepth reading about slices: Go slices usage and internals