In Go, we often write code with declaration in if
statement and also return err
. Like this:
if res, err := getResult(); err != nil {
return err
} else {
fmt.Println(res)
// do something with res
}
But the linter always tells me should drop the else
block after return
:
⚠ https://revive.run/r#indent-error-flow if block ends with a return statement, so drop this else and outdent its block (move short variable declaration to its own line if necessary)
The code snippet should looks like this to meet the suggestion:
res, err := getResult()
if err != nil {
return err
}
fmt.Println(res)
// do something with res
It seems that we should avoid to use the declaration in if
statements.
So what is the correct Go style? And what should I do with the declaration in if
statements?
The section about if
in Effective Go provides some guidance about this:
The code reads well if the successful flow of control runs down the page, eliminating error cases as they arise. Since error cases tend to end in
return
statements, the resulting code needs noelse
statements.f, err := os.Open(name) if err != nil { return err } d, err := f.Stat() if err != nil { f.Close() return err } codeUsing(f, d)
If you adhere to this style, and if you intend to use the non-error
results in your "happy path", you simply cannot declare the function's results as variables in the simple statement that can precede the condition of the if
statement; you have no choice but to put that variable declaration before the if
. However, in cases where the function only returns an error
(or you don't care about its other results), you're free to put the variable declaration in the if
:
// within some HTTP handler
var u User
dec := json.NewDecoder(w)
if err := dec.Decode(&u) {
w.WriteHeader(http.StatusBadRequest)
return
}
// use u