Skip to content

Go variable declaration

In Go, variables are used to hold data within a program.^[400-devops__09-Scripting-Language__golang__introduction__readme.md] Because variables consume memory space, it is standard practice to keep their usage minimal and efficient^[400-devops__09-Scripting-Language__golang__introduction__readme.md].

Declaration Syntax

Go provides two primary ways to declare variables within a function, distinguished by the use of the var keyword versus the short assignment operator :=^[400-devops__09-Scripting-Language__golang__introduction__readme.md].

var keyword

The var keyword is used to explicitly declare a variable.^[400-devops__09-Scripting-Language__golang__introduction__readme.md] This method assigns a value to the variable at the time of declaration.

var firstName = "Marcel"

Short declaration operator (:=)

For concise code, Go allows variables to be declared and initialized using the := operator^[400-devops__09-Scripting-Language__golang__introduction__readme.md]. This syntax infers the type based on the assigned value.

lastName := "Dempers"

Variable Assignment

Once declared, variables can hold values to be used in operations or returned by functions^[400-devops__09-Scripting-Language__golang__introduction__readme.md]. While values can be assigned to named variables (e.g., fullName), it is also possible to return the result of a computation or a literal directly without declaring an intermediate variable^[400-devops__09-Scripting-Language__golang__introduction__readme.md].

fullName := firstName + " " + lastName
// Direct computation is also valid
return firstName + " " + lastName
  • [[Go functions]]
  • [[Go control flow]]

Sources

^[400-devops__09-Scripting-Language__golang__introduction__readme.md]