Why are lists used infrequently in Go?

Question

I\'m new to Go, and quite excited about it. But, in all the languages I\'ve worked with extensively: Delphi, C#, C++, Python - Lists are very important because they can be dynam

Answer 1

Just about always when you are thinking of a list - use a slice instead in Go. Slices are dynamically re-sized. Underlying them is a contiguous slice of memory which can change size.

They are very flexible as you'll see if you read the SliceTricks wiki page.

Here is an excerpt :-

Copy

b = make([]T, len(a))
copy(b, a) // or b = append([]T(nil), a...)

Cut

a = append(a[:i], a[j:]...)

Delete

a = append(a[:i], a[i+1:]...) // or a = a[:i+copy(a[i:], a[i+1:])]

Delete without preserving order

a[i], a = a[len(a)-1], a[:len(a)-1]

Pop

x, a = a[len(a)-1], a[:len(a)-1]

Push

a = append(a, x)

Update: Here is a link to a blog post all about slices from the go team itself, which does a good job of explaining the relationship between slices and arrays and slice internals.