100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

6 Functions and methods

This chapter covers

• When to use value or pointer receivers
• When to use named result parameters and their potential side effects
• Avoiding a common mistake while returning a nil receiver
• Why using functions that accept a filename isn’t a best practice
• Handling defer arguments

A function wraps a sequence of statements into a unit that can be called elsewhere. It can take some input(s) and produces some output(s). On the other hand, a method is a function attached to a given type. The attached type is called a receiver and can be a pointer or a value. We start this chapter by discussing how to choose one receiver type or the other, as this is usually a source of debate. Then we discuss named parameters, when to use them, ...