{++ Shorthand++} Declaration Of Variables.
Objective
Learn how to declare variables using the shorthand method.
Declaration
Go ships with a smart compiler, it can detect the data type and automatically assign it to variables, using short declaration is very widely used in Go, with this method you can create variables on the fly, no need for prior declaration.
General syntax
variableName := value
It is also called as inference type declaration, meaning that the variable type is "inferred" from the value. This method offers various benefits such as compiler can choose the right data type and much more which we will explore as we write more code.
Structure
Navigate to our code folder
code/basic/
For our program create a new folder '06_shorthand_declaration'
code/basic/06_shorthand_declaration
And lets create a file 'shorthand_declaration.go' in it, finally the structure would look like this:
code/basic/06_shorthand_declaration/shorthand_declaration.go
Code
Shorthand Declaration
1 package main
2
3 import "fmt"
4 func main() {
5 // declaring integer
6 num := 12
7 fmt.Printf("The type of variable 'num' is: %T.\n", num)
8
9 // declaring float
10 decimal := 15.45
11 fmt.Printf("The type of variable 'decimal' is: %T.\n", decimal)
12
13 // declaring string
14 name := "Octallium"
15 fmt.Printf("The type of variable 'name' is : %T.\n", name)
16 }
Code Review
On line 6, 10 & 14 we declare a new variable
num := 12
decimal := 15.45
name := "Octallium"
To check the data type we use a special format output function
fmt.Printf()
Note, in the earlier examples we had used
fmt.Println()
On line 7, 11 & 15, we print out the data type, to check the data type we use a special character "%T", which acts as a placeholder and represent the data "Type", it is followed by the variable name.
fmt.Printf("The type of variable 'num' is: %T.\n", num)
fmt.Printf("The type of variable 'decimal' is: %T.\n", decimal)
fmt.Printf("The type of variable 'name' is : %T.\n", name)
If you don't understand the print statements, no worries, we will be having a dedicated section on formatting output, for now type everything as in the code above and make sure it runs.
Run Code
Open your terminal and navigate to our folder
code/basic/06_shorthand_declaration
Once in the folder type the following command
go run shorthand_declaration.go
Output
Output
The type of variable 'num' is: int.
The type of variable 'decimal' is: float64.
The type of variable 'name' is : string.
Github
Just in case you have some errors with your code, you can check out the code at github repo
Golang Playground
You can also run the code at playground
Next
In the next chapter we will see about {++ if/else++} condition, don't worry if its becoming too geeky, keep up with the code and in no time you will get the hang of it.