3. Variables in Go — A Book of Go
Now, let’s talk about variables.
Variables can be declared with the keyword var
:
- Can be a list of variables: `var a, b, c int
- Can be used within functions (used at package or function level)
- A
var
declaration can have an initialisation:var i int = 1
Yet, var
can also be used without directly defining the data (initialization). A declaration alone looks like this:
Thinking back to the last section and the topic of inference, a standalone declaration, as in the example, is the exception to the rule. In this case, we need to provide a data type, as Go can’t infer the type from the value (as we don’t provide a value).
Later in our code, an integer value can be assigned to our variable like this:
Aside from var
there is also :=
. This syntax can be used to declare and initialize variables within functions. It looks like this:
- Can be used instead of
var
only inside of functions - We don’t need to and can’t provide a datatype
- Can’t be used at the package level
- Outside of functions, everything begins with a keyword