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Error handling in Go: Best practices

Blog post from LogRocket

Post Details
Company
Date Published
Author
Raphael Ugwu
Word Count
2,165
Language
-
Hacker News Points
-
Summary

Handling errors in Go requires a unique approach compared to other mainstream programming languages, emphasizing the importance of addressing errors through multiple return values and utilizing packages like pkg/errors for enhanced error handling capabilities. The language allows functions to return multiple values, including an error, enabling developers to manage potential failures effectively. Go's error handling can be augmented with custom error types and structures, offering more context and debugging information. The language includes mechanisms like defer, panic, and recover, which serve as alternatives to exception handling found in languages like JavaScript. These are intended for use in unexpected, unrecoverable failures rather than routine error management. With the introduction of error wrapping in Go v1.13, developers can provide additional context to errors and inspect them using functions such as errors.Unwrap, errors.Is, and errors.As. This functionality supports the creation of robust and maintainable Go applications by allowing more granular control over error propagation and handling.