An array has a fixed size. A slice, on the other hand, is a dynamically-sized, flexible view into the elements of an array. In practice, slices are much more common than arrays.
The type []T is a slice with elements of type T.
A slice is formed by specifying two indices, a low and high bound, separated by a colon: a[low : high]
This selects a half-open range which includes the first element, but excludes the last one.
The following expression creates a slice which includes elements 1 through 3 of a: a[1:4]
$ vim slices.go
// _Slices_ are a key data type in Go, giving a more
// powerful interface to sequences than arrays.
package main
import "fmt"
func process(names []string) {
names[0] = "a"
names[1] = "b"
names[2] = "c"
}
func main() {
// Unlike arrays, slices are typed only by the
// elements they contain (not the number of elements).
// To create an empty slice with non-zero length, use
// the builtin `make`. Here we make a slice of
// `string`s of length `3` (initially zero-valued).
s := make([]string, 3)
fmt.Println("emp:", s)
// We can set and get just like with arrays.
// s[0] = "a"
// s[1] = "b"
// s[2] = "c"
process(s)
fmt.Println("set:", s)
fmt.Println("get:2", s[2])
// `len` returns the length of the slice as expected.
fmt.Println("len:", len(s))
// In addition to these basic operations, slices
// support several more that make them richer than
// arrays. One is the builtin `append`, which
// returns a slice containing one or more new values.
// Note that we need to accept a return value from
// append as we may get a new slice value.
s = append(s, "d")
s = append(s, "e", "f")
fmt.Println("apd:", s)
// Slices can also be `copy`'d. Here we create an
// empty slice `c` of the same length as `s` and copy
// into `c` from `s`.
c := make([]string, len(s))
copy(c, s)
fmt.Println("cpy:", c)
// Slices support a "slice" operator with the syntax
// `slice[low:high]`. For example, this gets a slice
// of the elements `s[2]`, `s[3]`, and `s[4]`.
l := s[2:5]
fmt.Println("sl1:", l)
// This slices up to (but excluding) `s[5]`.
l = s[:5]
fmt.Println("sl2:", l)
// And this slices up from (and including) `s[2]`.
l = s[2:]
fmt.Println("sl3:", l)
// We can declare and initialize a variable for slice
// in a single line as well.
t := []string{"g", "h", "i"}
fmt.Println("dcl:", t)
// Slices can be composed into multi-dimensional data
// structures. The length of the inner slices can
// vary, unlike with multi-dimensional arrays.
twoD := make([][]int, 3)
for i := 0; i < 3; i++ {
innerLen := i + 1
twoD[i] = make([]int, innerLen)
for j := 0; j < innerLen; j++ {
twoD[i][j] = i + j
}
}
fmt.Println("2d: ", twoD)
}
$ go run slices.go
emp: [ ]
set: [a b c]
get:2 c
len: 3
apd: [a b c d e f]
cpy: [a b c d e f]
sl1: