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Go print functions

last modified April 11, 2024

In this article we show how to print to console with fmt.Print, fmt.Printf, and fmt.Println.

The functions are variadic, i.e. they can accept multiple arguments.

$ go version
go version go1.22.2 linux/amd64

We use Go version 1.22.2.

Go fmt.Print

The fmt.Print writes its arguments to the standard output. It adds spaces between operands when neither is a string.

func Print(a ...any) (n int, err error)

The function returns the number of bytes written and any write error encountered.

main.go
package main

import "fmt"

func main() {

    var w1, w2, w3 string = "An", "old", "falcon"

    fmt.Print("An old falcon\n")
    fmt.Print("An", " old", " falcon", "\n")
    fmt.Print(w1, " ", w2, " ", w3, "\n")

    var n1 int = 14
    var n2 int = 11
    var n3 int = 12

    fmt.Print(n1, n2, n3)
    fmt.Print("\n")
}

We write three messages and three integers to the console.

var w1, w2, w3 string = "An", "old", "falcon"

fmt.Print("An old falcon\n")
fmt.Print("An", " old", " falcon", "\n")
fmt.Print(w1, " ", w2, " ", w3, "\n")

Three strings are written to the console. We explicitly add spaces and newlines.

var n1 int = 14
var n2 int = 11
var n3 int = 12

fmt.Print(n1, n2, n3)

When printing integers, the spaces are automatically added between them.

$ go run main.go
An old falcon
An old falcon
An old falcon
14 11 12

Go fmt.Println

The fmt.Println writes its arguments to the standard output and appends a newline character. It adds spaces between operands when neither is a string.

func Println(a ...any) (n int, err error)

The function returns the number of bytes written and any write error encountered.

main.go
package main

import "fmt"

func main() {

    var w1, w2, w3 string = "An", "old", "falcon"

    var n1 int = 14
    var n2 int = 11
    var n3 int = 12

    fmt.Println("An old falcon")
    fmt.Println("An", " old", " falcon")
    fmt.Println(w1, " ", w2, " ", w3)

    fmt.Println(n1, n2, n3)
}

In the example, we can remove newline characters since the fmt.Println automatically appends them.

Go fmt.Printf

The fmt.Printf formats according to a format specifier and writes to standard output.

func Printf(format string, a ...any) (n int, err error)

The function returns the number of bytes written and any write error encountered.

main.go
package main

import (
    "fmt"
)

func main() {

    name := "Jane"
    age := 17

    fmt.Printf("%s is %d years old\n", name, age)
}

In the example, we write a formatted message to the console.

fmt.Printf("%s is %d years old\n", name, age)

The %s specifier is used for strings and %d for integers.

$ go run main.go
Jane is 17 years old

Go built-in print functions

Go also contains built-in print and println functions, which are outside of any module. The functions are useful for quick debugging.

main.go
package main

func main() {

    print("An old falcon\n")
    println("An old falcon")
}

The documentation writes that they may be removed in the future.

Source

Go fmt package - reference

In this article we have showed how to print to the console in Go using fmt.Print, fmt.Println, and fmt.Printf functions.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar and I am a passionate programmer with many years of programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. So far, I have written over 1400 articles and 8 e-books. I have over eight years of experience in teaching programming.

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