Why can't I duplicate a slice with `copy()`?

Question

I need to make a copy of a slice in Go and reading the docs there is a copy function at my disposal.

The copy built-in function copies elements from a so

Answer 1

If your slices were of the same size, it would work:

arr := []int{1, 2, 3}
tmp := []int{0, 0, 0}
i := copy(tmp, arr)
fmt.Println(i)
fmt.Println(tmp)
fmt.Println(arr)

Would give:

3
[1 2 3]
[1 2 3]

From "Go Slices: usage and internals":

The copy function supports copying between slices of different lengths (it will copy only up to the smaller number of elements)

The usual example is:

t := make([]byte, len(s), (cap(s)+1)*2)
copy(t, s)
s = t