Golang in sixty seconds — named return values

Named return values are exactly what they sound like. Instead of just having a return Type on your function, you can actually name the value that is being returned. Let me show you with a simple example:

func sumValues(vals []int) (total int) {
  for _, v := range vals {
    total += v
  }
  return
}

The benefit is primarily for readability. You can be clear with what a function should return. You may notice a few things in the code block above that looks strange:

1. The total variable looks to be undefined. This is because the variable actually gets created with a nil value (in this case 0) by having it as a named return value.
2. There's nothing after the return value. This is known as a “naked return” and Go knows to return the variable total. It's recommended that you only use naked returns on small functions as you lose readability with longer functions.

I find named return values quite useful for things like the example above where you remove the need to define a nil value variable at the start of the function. You can try the above example here.

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