How Can I Prevent Out-of-Bounds Errors When Slicing in Go?

Slicing in Go: Avoiding Out of Bounds Errors

Slicing allows us to create a new slice from an existing slice by specifying range of indices. However, if the specified range exceeds the bounds of the original slice, an out-of-bounds error can occur.

In the provided code, the line c := b[1:] attempts to create a new slice c from the slice b. The error occurs because the high index bound for c is not explicitly specified, and it defaults to the length of b, which is 0.

The general form of slicing in Go is:

subslice := original[start:end]

• start is the inclusive starting index of the new slice.
• end is the exclusive ending index of the new slice.

If start is omitted, it defaults to 0. If end is omitted, it defaults to len(original).

In the case of slices, the upper index bound is limited by the slice's capacity (cap()), not its length (len()). This means that if we specify an end index greater than cap(original), it is still considered valid. However, if we specify an end index greater than len(original), an out-of-bounds error occurs.

To avoid this error, we need to ensure that the specified range does not exceed the bounds of the original slice. In the example code, we can fix the issue by explicitly specifying the upper index bound:

c := b[1:2]

This will create a slice c with a length of 1 and a capacity of 4, containing the element at index 1 of the slice b.

The above is the detailed content of How Can I Prevent Out-of-Bounds Errors When Slicing in Go?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!