Functions

On the surface, Go functions are exactly the same as in any other programming language: a section of code designed to perform a certain task grouped into a re-usable container. Thanks to the static nature of the language, all functions have a signature that defines the number and types of acceptable input arguments and output values.

Consider the following function (generateName) that generates a new name based on a pair of input strings (base, suffix). You can find the full code of the next example at ch03/functions1/main.go.

func generateName(base string, suffix string) string {
    parts := []string{base, suffix}
    return strings.Join(parts, "-")
}
 
func main() {
    s := generateName("device", "01")
 
    // prints "device-01"
    fmt.Println(s)
}

This function’s signature is func (string, string) string, meaning that it accepts two arguments of type string and returns another string. You can assign the returned value to...