Go Systems Programming

The init() function

Every Go package can have a function named init() that is automatically executed at the beginning of the execution. So, let's add the following init() function to the code of the anotherPackage.go package:

func init() { 
   fmt.Println("The init function of anotherPackage") 
} 

The current implementation of the init() function is naive and does nothing special. However, there are times when you want to perform important initializations before you start using a package such as opening database and network connections: in these relatively rare cases the init() function is invaluable.