Cool ways to write functions in Go

Today, I learned something handy about Go's functions. You can actually return multiple values, unlike in JavaScript, where I would typically return an object containing the state.

  // Example
  func add(a int, b int) (int, string) {
     return a + b, "Hurray!"
  }

You can also name the return values, which makes them local variables within the function and allows for an "empty return".

  // Example
  func add(a int, b int) (result int, message string) {
     result = a + b
     message = "Hurray!"
     return
  }

Although I don't find using an empty return to be the best way to write functions, it’s still pretty cool.

Comments

[Mike Stemle]

You can totally do this in JavaScript.

const add_and_multiply=(a,b) =>
  [a+b, a*b]

const [add,multiply] = add_and_multiply(20,22)

Is Go’s approach any different under the hood that you know of?

[Pavel Belokon]

While they may seem similar at first glance,in Go, you directly name the return values and then retrieve them from the returned tuple, which is a distinct approach compared to destructuring in JavaScript. However, if you don't look the difference between the languages this approach is identical.