Go gotcha: Why is this index out of range?

Why does this program crash?

a := []int{1, 2, 3}
for i := 1; i <= len(a); i++ {
        fmt.Println(a[i])
}
panic: runtime error: index out of range

goroutine 1 [running]:
main.main()
        ../main.go:3 +0xe0
Answer

In the last iteration, i equals len(a) which is outside the bounds of a.

Arrays, slices and strings are indexed starting from zero so the values of a are found at a[0], a[1], a[2], …, a[len(a)-1].

Loop from 0 to len(a)-1 instead:

for i := 0; i < len(a); i++ {
        fmt.Println(a[i])
}

or, better yet, use a range loop:

for _, n := range a {
        fmt.Println(n)
}
TOC
Go gotcha
20 of 26

Comments

Be the first to comment!