Go Constants

External

• https://go.dev/ref/spec#Constants

Internal

• Go Language

Overview

A constant is a typed expression whose value is created at compile time, and cannot be changed once declared. The expressions that define constants must be constant expressions, evaluatable by the compiler. The compiler detects modification attempts and throws a compilation error. The type is inferred from the right-hand side of the assignment.

Constants can only be numbers, characters (runes), strings or booleans.

Multiple constants can be assigned at the same time using enclosing parentheses.

const <constant_identifier> [constant_type] = <initial_value_literal>

const a = 1
const (
	b = 1.1
	c = "something"
)

Naming

The names of constants in Go follow the general naming conventions for identifiers. While other languages name their constants using all upper caps, Go does not do that. In Go, an unexported constant is maxLength, not MaxLength or MAX_LENGTH.

Enumerations

Go does not have formal enums, but the language allows for sets of related, yet distinct constants.

Go Enumerations