100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

4 Control structures

This chapter covers

• How a range loop assigns the element values and evaluates the provided expression
• Dealing with range loops and pointers
• Preventing common map iteration and loop- breaking mistakes
• Using defer inside a loop

Control structures in Go are similar to those in C or Java but differ from them in significant ways. For example, there is no do or while loop in Go, only a generalized for. This chapter delves into the most common mistakes related to control structures, with a strong focus on the range loop, which is a common source of misunderstanding.

4.1 #30: Ignoring the fact that elements are copied in range loops

A range loop is a convenient way to iterate over various data structures. We don’t have to handle ...