How to make variables without assigning values in Go or Golang?

August 13, 2022 - 2 min read

To make variables without assigning values in Golang, you can use the var keyword followed by the variable name you wish to give and then the type of the value that you wish to hold in the variable.

TL;DR

package main

import "fmt"

// make a variable but do
// not assign a value now
var name string

func main() {
    // assign a value to the `name`
    // variable using the `=` operator
    name = "John Doe"

    // log the `name` variable
    // value to console
    fmt.Print(name) // John Doe
}

For example, let's say we need to make a variable called name but we do not need to assign a value to it right away.

It can be done like this,

package main

// make a variable but do
// not assign a value now
var name string

Now to assign a value to it we can use the = operator (equal symbol) after the variable name, in our case it is name and then after the = symbol, we can write the value that needs to be assigned to it.

It can be done like this,

package main

// make a variable but do
// not assign a value now
var name string

func main() {
    // assign a value to the `name`
    // variable using the `=` operator
    name = "John Doe"
}

NOTE: When assigning a value to a variable in Go, you need to make sure it is inside a function or it will throw an error

Finally, let's print the variable name value to the console using the Print() method from the fmt standard package in Go like this,

package main

import "fmt"

// make a variable but do
// not assign a value now
var name string

func main() {
    // assign a value to the `name`
    // variable using the `=` operator
    name = "John Doe"

    // log the `name` variable
    // value to console
    fmt.Print(name) // John Doe
}

We have successfully made a variable without assigning a value in Go. Yay 🥳!

See the above code live in The Go Playground.

That's all 😃.

Feel free to share if you found this useful 😃.