I have written the following type and Get function for the Web Crawler exercise of the go tour.
type UrlCache struct {
urls map[string]string
mux sync.Mutex
}
func (c *UrlCache) Get(key string) (value string, ok bool) {
c.mux.Lock()
defer c.mux.Unlock()
value, ok = c.urls[key]
return
}
Everything works but I wonder if there is a way to improve the Get function, I have tried the following:
func (c *UrlCache) Get(key string) (string, bool) {
c.mux.Lock()
defer c.mux.Unlock()
return c.urls[key]
}
But that throws
prog.go:24:2: not enough arguments to return
have (string)
want (string, bool)
Is there a way to pass both return values of the get on the map as return?
It is not possible in a single return statement.
And the reason for this is in the Spec: Index expressions:
An index expression on a map a of type map[K]V used in an assignment or initialization of the special form
v, ok = a[x]
v, ok := a[x]
var v, ok = a[x]
var v, ok T = a[x]
yields an additional untyped boolean value. The value of ok is true if the key x is present in the map, and false otherwise.
The stress is that the special comma-ok form may only be used in an assignment or initialization. You try to use it in a return statement, so the index expression yields only a single result, hence the compile-time error you get.
And since assignments in Go are not expressions but statements, you can't even do something like:
return (value, ok = c.urls[key]) // COMPILE-TIME ERROR!
My apologies, misread things:
When you return the map value, you are accessing the map in a 'single-value' context. You can access the map with one value returned, or with two. Unless you signal go that you want two values, you will only get one. So you can't really (if you do want to return two things) avoid getting the map value with the value, ok := signature. The first version of the function names the return parameters, allowing for a bare return statement at the end to 'just work', the second version would require
value, ok := c.urls[key]
return value, ok
I'm getting this return value from a function call in the "reflect" package:
< map[string]string Value >.
Wondering if I can access the actual map inside the return value and if so, how?
EDIT:
So this is where I'm making the call which returns the Value object.
It returns [< map[string]string Value >] to which I grab the first object in that array. However, I'm not sure how to convert [< map[string]string Value >] into a regular map.
view_args := reflect.ValueOf(&controller_ref).MethodByName(action_name).Call(in)
Most reflect Value objects can be converted back to a interface{} value using the .Interface() method.
After obtaining this value, you can assert it back to the map you want. Example (play):
m := map[string]int{"foo": 1, "bar": 3}
v := reflect.ValueOf(m)
i := v.Interface()
a := i.(map[string]int)
println(a["foo"]) // 1
In the example above, m is your original map and v is the reflected value. The interface value i, acquired by the Interface method is asserted to be of type map[string]int and this value is used as such in the last line.
To turn the value in a reflect.Value into an interface{}, you use iface := v.Interface(). Then, to access that, you use a type assertion or type switch.
If you know you're getting a map[string]string the assertion is simply m := iface.(map[string]string). If there's a handful of possibilities, the type switch to handle them all looks like:
switch item := iface.(type) {
case map[string]string:
fmt.Println("it's a map, and key \"key\" is", item["key"])
case string:
fmt.Println("it's a string:", item)
default:
// optional--code that runs if it's none of the above types
// could use reflect to access the object if that makes sense
// or could do an error return or panic if appropriate
fmt.Println("unknown type")
}
Of course, that only works if you can write out all the concrete types you're interested out in the code. If you don't know the possible types at compile time, you have to use methods like v.MapKeys() and v.MapIndex(key) to work more with the reflect.Value, and, in my experience, that involves a long time looking at the reflect docs and is often verbose and pretty tricky.
I have a variable of type value that stores a map, but I can not access the values by providing the keys:
rascal>a
value: ("s":"s")
rascal>a["s"]
|stdin:///|(2,3,<1,2>,<1,5>): subscript not supported on value at |stdin:///|(2,3,<1,2>,<1,5>)
☞ Advice
How can I parse the value to map in order to be able to retrieve my value ?
if (map[str,str] myMap := a) {
// do stuff with myMap
}
else {
throw "<a> is not a map?";
}
Another way of "narrowing types" is using pattern matching in function parameters:
rascal>value x = 1;
int: 1
rascal>int myFunc(int i) = 2 * i;
ok
rascal>myFunc(x);
int: 2
And yet another way is using visit or switch:
visit(bigValue) {
case Expression e => ...work with e...
}
The general idea is:
pattern matching means narrowing (downcasting)
pattern matching may fail and so is always in a conditional context
there are many places in Rascal where you can use pattern matching: function dispatch, switch, visit, :=, <-
I know I can iterate over a map m with
for k, v := range m { ... }
and look for a key, but is there a more efficient way of testing for a key's existence in a map?
Here's how you check if a map contains a key.
val, ok := myMap["foo"]
// If the key exists
if ok {
// Do something
}
This initializes two variables. val is the value of "foo" from the map if it exists, or a "zero value" if it doesn't (in this case the empty string). ok is a bool that will be set to true if the key existed.
If you want, you can shorten this to a one-liner.
if val, ok := myMap["foo"]; ok {
//do something here
}
Go allows you to put an initializing statement before the condition (notice the semicolon) in the if statement. The consequence of this is that the scope ofval and ok will be limited to the body of the if statement, which is helpful if you only need to access them there.
In addition to The Go Programming Language Specification, you should read Effective Go. In the section on maps, they say, amongst other things:
An attempt to fetch a map value with a key that is not present in the
map will return the zero value for the type of the entries in the map.
For instance, if the map contains integers, looking up a non-existent
key will return 0. A set can be implemented as a map with value type
bool. Set the map entry to true to put the value in the set, and then
test it by simple indexing.
attended := map[string]bool{
"Ann": true,
"Joe": true,
...
}
if attended[person] { // will be false if person is not in the map
fmt.Println(person, "was at the meeting")
}
Sometimes you need to distinguish a missing entry from a zero value.
Is there an entry for "UTC" or is that 0 because it's not in the map
at all? You can discriminate with a form of multiple assignment.
var seconds int
var ok bool
seconds, ok = timeZone[tz]
For obvious reasons this is called the “comma ok” idiom. In this
example, if tz is present, seconds will be set appropriately and ok
will be true; if not, seconds will be set to zero and ok will be
false. Here's a function that puts it together with a nice error
report:
func offset(tz string) int {
if seconds, ok := timeZone[tz]; ok {
return seconds
}
log.Println("unknown time zone:", tz)
return 0
}
To test for presence in the map without worrying about the actual
value, you can use the blank identifier (_) in place of the usual
variable for the value.
_, present := timeZone[tz]
Searched on the go-nuts email list and found a solution posted by Peter Froehlich on 11/15/2009.
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
dict := map[string]int {"foo" : 1, "bar" : 2}
value, ok := dict["baz"]
if ok {
fmt.Println("value: ", value)
} else {
fmt.Println("key not found")
}
}
Or, more compactly,
if value, ok := dict["baz"]; ok {
fmt.Println("value: ", value)
} else {
fmt.Println("key not found")
}
Note, using this form of the if statement, the value and ok variables are only visible inside the if conditions.
Short Answer
_, exists := timeZone[tz] // Just checks for key existence
val, exists := timeZone[tz] // Checks for key existence and retrieves the value
Example
Here's an example at the Go Playground.
Longer Answer
Per the Maps section of Effective Go:
An attempt to fetch a map value with a key that is not present in the map will return the zero value for the type of the entries in the map. For instance, if the map contains integers, looking up a non-existent key will return 0.
Sometimes you need to distinguish a missing entry from a zero value. Is there an entry for "UTC" or is that the empty string because it's not in the map at all? You can discriminate with a form of multiple assignment.
var seconds int
var ok bool
seconds, ok = timeZone[tz]
For obvious reasons this is called the “comma ok” idiom. In this example, if tz is present, seconds will be set appropriately and ok will be true; if not, seconds will be set to zero and ok will be false. Here's a function that puts it together with a nice error report:
func offset(tz string) int {
if seconds, ok := timeZone[tz]; ok {
return seconds
}
log.Println("unknown time zone:", tz)
return 0
}
To test for presence in the map without worrying about the actual value, you can use the blank identifier (_) in place of the usual variable for the value.
_, present := timeZone[tz]
Have a look at this snippet of code
nameMap := make(map[string]int)
nameMap["river"] = 33
v ,exist := nameMap["river"]
if exist {
fmt.Println("exist ",v)
}
As noted by other answers, the general solution is to use an index expression in an assignment of the special form:
v, ok = a[x]
v, ok := a[x]
var v, ok = a[x]
var v, ok T = a[x]
This is nice and clean. It has some restrictions though: it must be an assignment of special form. Right-hand side expression must be the map index expression only, and the left-hand expression list must contain exactly 2 operands, first to which the value type is assignable, and a second to which a bool value is assignable. The first value of the result of this special form will be the value associated with the key, and the second value will tell if there is actually an entry in the map with the given key (if the key exists in the map). The left-hand side expression list may also contain the blank identifier if one of the results is not needed.
It's important to know that if the indexed map value is nil or does not contain the key, the index expression evaluates to the zero value of the value type of the map. So for example:
m := map[int]string{}
s := m[1] // s will be the empty string ""
var m2 map[int]float64 // m2 is nil!
f := m2[2] // f will be 0.0
fmt.Printf("%q %f", s, f) // Prints: "" 0.000000
Try it on the Go Playground.
So if we know that we don't use the zero value in our map, we can take advantage of this.
For example if the value type is string, and we know we never store entries in the map where the value is the empty string (zero value for the string type), we can also test if the key is in the map by comparing the non-special form of the (result of the) index expression to the zero value:
m := map[int]string{
0: "zero",
1: "one",
}
fmt.Printf("Key 0 exists: %t\nKey 1 exists: %t\nKey 2 exists: %t",
m[0] != "", m[1] != "", m[2] != "")
Output (try it on the Go Playground):
Key 0 exists: true
Key 1 exists: true
Key 2 exists: false
In practice there are many cases where we don't store the zero-value value in the map, so this can be used quite often. For example interfaces and function types have a zero value nil, which we often don't store in maps. So testing if a key is in the map can be achieved by comparing it to nil.
Using this "technique" has another advantage too: you can check existence of multiple keys in a compact way (you can't do that with the special "comma ok" form). More about this: Check if key exists in multiple maps in one condition
Getting the zero value of the value type when indexing with a non-existing key also allows us to use maps with bool values conveniently as sets. For example:
set := map[string]bool{
"one": true,
"two": true,
}
fmt.Println("Contains 'one':", set["one"])
if set["two"] {
fmt.Println("'two' is in the set")
}
if !set["three"] {
fmt.Println("'three' is not in the set")
}
It outputs (try it on the Go Playground):
Contains 'one': true
'two' is in the set
'three' is not in the set
See related: How can I create an array that contains unique strings?
var d map[string]string
value, ok := d["key"]
if ok {
fmt.Println("Key Present ", value)
} else {
fmt.Println(" Key Not Present ")
}
var empty struct{}
var ok bool
var m map[string]struct{}
m = make(map[string]struct{})
m["somestring"] = empty
_, ok = m["somestring"]
fmt.Println("somestring exists?", ok)
_, ok = m["not"]
fmt.Println("not exists?", ok)
Then, go run maps.go
somestring exists? true
not exists? false
It is mentioned under "Index expressions".
An index expression on a map a of type map[K]V used in an assignment
or initialization of the special form
v, ok = a[x]
v, ok := a[x]
var v, ok = a[x]
yields an additional untyped boolean value. The value of ok is true if
the key x is present in the map, and false otherwise.
A two value assignment can be used for this purpose. Please check my sample program below
package main
import (
"fmt"
)
func main() {
//creating a map with 3 key-value pairs
sampleMap := map[string]int{"key1": 100, "key2": 500, "key3": 999}
//A two value assignment can be used to check existence of a key.
value, isKeyPresent := sampleMap["key2"]
//isKeyPresent will be true if key present in sampleMap
if isKeyPresent {
//key exist
fmt.Println("key present, value = ", value)
} else {
//key does not exist
fmt.Println("key does not exist")
}
}
Example usage: Looping through a slice, for pairMap checking if key exists.
It an algorithm to find all pairs that adds to a specific sum.
func findPairs(slice1 []int, sum int) {
pairMap := make(map[int]int)
for i, v := range slice1 {
if valuei, ok := pairMap[v]; ok {
fmt.Println("Pair Found", i, valuei)
} else {
pairMap[sum-v] = i
}
}
}
I have a map:
var sessions = map[string] chan int{}
How do I delete sessions[key]? I tried:
sessions[key] = nil,false;
That didn't work.
Update (November 2011):
The special syntax for deleting map entries is removed in Go version 1:
Go 1 will remove the special map assignment and introduce a new built-in function, delete: delete(m, x) will delete the map entry retrieved by the expression m[x]. ...
Go introduced a delete(map, key) function:
package main
func main () {
var sessions = map[string] chan int{};
delete(sessions, "moo");
}
Copied from Go 1 release notes
In the old language, to delete the entry with key k from the map represented by m, one wrote the statement,
m[k] = value, false
This syntax was a peculiar special case, the only two-to-one assignment. It required passing a value (usually ignored) that is evaluated but discarded, plus a boolean that was nearly always the constant false. It did the job but was odd and a point of contention.
In Go 1, that syntax has gone; instead there is a new built-in function, delete. The call
delete(m, k)
will delete the map entry retrieved by the expression m[k]. There is no return value. Deleting a non-existent entry is a no-op.
Updating: Running go fix will convert expressions of the form m[k] = value, false into delete(m, k) when it is clear that the ignored value can be safely discarded from the program and false refers to the predefined boolean constant. The fix tool will flag other uses of the syntax for inspection by the programmer.
From Effective Go:
To delete a map entry, use the delete built-in function, whose arguments are the map and the key to be deleted. It's safe to do this even if the key is already absent from the map.
delete(timeZone, "PDT") // Now on Standard Time
delete(sessions, "anykey")
These days, nothing will crash.
Use make (chan int) instead of nil. The first value has to be the same type that your map holds.
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
var sessions = map[string] chan int{}
sessions["somekey"] = make(chan int)
fmt.Printf ("%d\n", len(sessions)) // 1
// Remove somekey's value from sessions
delete(sessions, "somekey")
fmt.Printf ("%d\n", len(sessions)) // 0
}
UPDATE: Corrected my answer.