Convert string to integer type in Go?

Question

I\'m trying to convert a string returned from flag.Arg(n) to an int. What is the idiomatic way to do this in Go?

Answer 1

Here are three ways to parse strings into integers, from fastest runtime to slowest:

1. strconv.ParseInt(...) fastest
2. strconv.Atoi(...) still very fast
3. fmt.Sscanf(...) not terribly fast but most flexible

Here's a benchmark that shows usage and example timing for each function:

package main

import "fmt"
import "strconv"
import "testing"

var num = 123456
var numstr = "123456"

func BenchmarkStrconvParseInt(b *testing.B) {
  num64 := int64(num)
  for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
    x, err := strconv.ParseInt(numstr, 10, 64)
    if x != num64 || err != nil {
      b.Error(err)
    }
  }
}

func BenchmarkAtoi(b *testing.B) {
  for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
    x, err := strconv.Atoi(numstr)
    if x != num || err != nil {
      b.Error(err)
    }
  }
}

func BenchmarkFmtSscan(b *testing.B) {
  for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
    var x int
    n, err := fmt.Sscanf(numstr, "%d", &x)
    if n != 1 || x != num || err != nil {
      b.Error(err)
    }
  }
}

You can run it by saving as atoi_test.go and running go test -bench=. atoi_test.go.

goos: darwin
goarch: amd64
BenchmarkStrconvParseInt-8      100000000           17.1 ns/op
BenchmarkAtoi-8                 100000000           19.4 ns/op
BenchmarkFmtSscan-8               2000000          693   ns/op
PASS
ok      command-line-arguments  5.797s