Go Error Handling Techniques [closed]

Answer 1

I would agree with jnml's answer that they are both idiomatic code, and add the following:

Your first example:

if err != nil {
      //handle err
}

is more idiomatic when dealing with more than one return value. for example:

val, err := someFunc()
if err != nil {
      //handle err
}
//do stuff with val

Your second example is nice shorthand when only dealing with the err value. This applies if the function only returns an error, or if you deliberately ignore the returned values other than the error. As an example, this is sometimes used with the Reader and Writer functions that return an int of the number of bytes written (sometimes unnecessary information) and an error:

if _, err := f.Read(file); err != nil {
      //handle err
}
//do stuff with f

The second form is referred to as using an if initialization statement.

So with regards to best practices, as far as I know (except for using the "errors" package to create new errors when you need them) you've covered pretty much everything you need to know abut errors in Go!

EDIT: If you find you really can't live without exceptions, you can mimic them with defer,panic & recover.