Go/Arrays

Go blog post: arrays, slices, and strings: https://blog.golang.org/slices

Arrays in Go

"Arrays are not often seen in Go programs because the size of an array is part of its type, which limits its expressive power."

The most common use of arrays are to store slices, which we will see in a moment.

Array size is a part of the type

An important characteristic of arrays is that their size is a part of their type.

The two variables defined here are of two distinct types:

var buffer [256]byte
var buffer2 [512]byte

This is because the size of the array is allocated at initialization time. You can use the square bracket syntax to access elements of an array, buffer[0] through buffer[255]. The program crashes if you access an index outside of its range.

Array slices

The bracket notation with colons can be used to refer to a slice of an array. For example:

var buffer [256]byte
...
var slice []byte = buffer[100:150]

alternatively,

slice := buffer[100:150]

Think of a slice variable as a data structure with two elements: a length, and a pointer to an element of the array.

We can also take a slice of the slice:

slice2 := slice[5:10]

Here's a shortcut to drop the first and last elements:

slice3 := slice[1:len(slice)-1]

References vs Copies

It is important to distinguish between the slice data structure, which is a small bundle that contains a reference to the underlying array data and a length, and the underlying array data itself.

if we use a slice to modify the underlying array data, those changes will be persistent across functions and scopes. But if we modify the slice variable directly, we are modifying a copy of the slice data structure, and we will discard that copy when we leave that scope.

Example modifying underlying array data

The following example modifies the underlying array data:

func AddOneToEachElement(slice []byte) {
    for i := range slice {
        slice[i]++
    }
}

func main() {
    slice := buffer[10:20]
    for i := 0; i < len(slice); i++ {
        slice[i] = byte(i)
    }
    fmt.Println("before", slice)
    AddOneToEachElement(slice)
    fmt.Println("after", slice)
}

Again, this requires us to think about the array slice as a data structure, which contains a pointer to an array and a length. The bundle, the data structure, is not a pointer itself!

Even though the slice (also called the "slice header") is passed by value, the header includes a pointer to elements of an array. Thus, both the original and the copy passed to the function refer to the same underlying array (slots in memory).

Example modifying copy of slice

The argument to the SubtractOneFromLength function is a slice, which in this case is a copy of the original slice data structure, containing a reference to the same underlying data.

When we modify the slice variable directly, those changes only affect the copy of the data slice, so the original slice is not affected.

func SubtractOneFromLength(slice []byte) []byte {
    slice = slice[0 : len(slice)-1]
    return slice
}

func main() {
    fmt.Println("Before: len(slice) =", len(slice))
    newSlice := SubtractOneFromLength(slice)
    fmt.Println("After:  len(slice) =", len(slice))
    fmt.Println("After:  len(newSlice) =", len(newSlice))
}