How to Handle Errors in Go - The JetBrains Blog

Go treats errors as ordinary values returned alongside function results, requiring callers to check and either handle, log, or propagate them, usually with the error as the final return value. The guide explains creating errors, adding diagnostic context with `fmt.Errorf` and `%w`, preserving error chains for inspection through `errors.Is`, `errors.As`, and Go 1.26’s type-safe `errors.AsType`, as well as collecting multiple failures with `errors.Join`. It distinguishes routine, expected failures such as invalid input, missing files, I/O problems, and network interruptions from exceptional conditions appropriate for `panic`, while describing `recover` as a limited mechanism for keeping services alive after isolated panics. It also covers context cancellation causes, deferred resource cleanup, custom error types, retry strategies for temporary network errors, and I/O semantics including `io.EOF`. Recommended practices include never ignoring returned errors, providing specific contextual information, choosing libraries with reliable error behavior, logging errors at an appropriate application layer, and avoiding `log.Fatal` outside `main` because it bypasses deferred cleanup.

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