':=' in Go Programming Language

Go programming language is a statically-typed programming language designed at Google by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson in 2007. One of the unique features of Go programming language is the use of ':=' operator to declare and assign variables in a single statement.

The ':=' operator is called the short variable declaration operator. It is a convenient way to declare and assign values to variables. Unlike the '=' operator, the ':=' operator infers the type of the variable from the assigned value.

Here is an example of how to use the ':=' operator:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    // declare and assign a string variable
    s := "Hello, Gophers!"

    // declare and assign an integer variable
    i := 42

    // declare and assign a boolean variable
    b := true

    fmt.Println(s, i, b)
}

The above code declares and assigns a string variable s with the value "Hello, Gophers!", an integer variable i with the value 42, and a boolean variable b with the value true. Then, it prints the values of these variables to the console.

The output of the above code will be:

Hello, Gophers! 42 true

As you can see, the ':=' operator allows you to declare and assign variables in a single statement, making the code shorter and more readable.

In addition to the short variable declaration operator, Go programming language also has the regular variable declaration syntax using the '=' operator. The '=' operator requires you to explicitly state the data type of the declared variable.

Here is an example of how to use the '=' operator:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    // declare a string variable
    var s string

    // assign a value to the string variable
    s = "Hello, Gophers!"

    // declare an integer variable
    var i int

    // assign a value to the integer variable
    i = 42

    // declare a boolean variable
    var b bool

    // assign a value to the boolean variable
    b = true

    fmt.Println(s, i, b)
}

The above code achieves the same result as the previous code using the regular variable declaration syntax.

In conclusion, the ':=' operator is a unique feature of the Go programming language that allows you to declare and assign variables in a single statement. This makes the code shorter and more readable.