02-learning-golang-conditionals-2025-09-01

References

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Introduction

Am going to begin the section about conditionals. I wonder how this compares to other languages?

Immediate takeaway,

if statements in Go do not use parentheses around the condition

Think this is similar to python. But IIRC, we do need the parentheses in javascript. The example they use,

if height > 4 {
    fmt.Println("You are tall enough!")
}

The comparison operators look like standard stuff.

Oh. We can have full expressions as part of the conditional check in an IF block. Here is their example,

if length := getLength(email); length < 1 {
    fmt.Println("Email is invalid")
}

Something notable is that the variables created this way are only available within the scope of the if body. They are not available further below.

swtich statements exist in golang , similar to C but their default behaviour is different. In golang the break is implicit at the end of the switch statement. If we want execution to continue, it must be explicitly set using the fallthrough keyword. Here is the example they use,

func getCreator(os string) string {
    var creator string
    switch os {
    case "linux":
        creator = "Linus Torvalds"
    case "windows":
        creator = "Bill Gates"
 
    // all three of these cases will set creator to "A Steve"
    case "macOS":
        fallthrough
    case "Mac OS X":
        fallthrough
    case "mac":
        creator = "A Steve"
 
    default:
        creator = "Unknown"
    }
    return creator
}

The default at the end works as we’d expect.

I wonder if, similar to the IF statement, we can have code assignments as part of the conditional check for a swtich ?