How do you clear a slice in Go?

Question

What is the appropriate way to clear a slice in Go?

Here\'s what I\'ve found in the go forums:

// test.go
package main

import (
    \"fmt\"
)

func          


        

Answer 1

I was looking into this issue a bit for my own purposes; I had a slice of structs (including some pointers) and I wanted to make sure I got it right; ended up on this thread, and wanted to share my results.

To practice, I did a little go playground: https://play.golang.org/p/9i4gPx3lnY

which evals to this:

package main

import "fmt"

type Blah struct {
    babyKitten int
    kittenSays *string
}

func main() {
    meow := "meow"
    Blahs := []Blah{}
    fmt.Printf("Blahs: %v\n", Blahs)
    Blahs = append(Blahs, Blah{1, &meow})
    fmt.Printf("Blahs: %v\n", Blahs)
    Blahs = append(Blahs, Blah{2, &meow})
    fmt.Printf("Blahs: %v\n", Blahs)
    //fmt.Printf("kittenSays: %v\n", *Blahs[0].kittenSays)
    Blahs = nil
    meow2 := "nyan"
    fmt.Printf("Blahs: %v\n", Blahs)
    Blahs = append(Blahs, Blah{1, &meow2})
    fmt.Printf("Blahs: %v\n", Blahs)
    fmt.Printf("kittenSays: %v\n", *Blahs[0].kittenSays)
}

Running that code as-is will show the same memory address for both "meow" and "meow2" variables as being the same:

Blahs: []
Blahs: [{1 0x1030e0c0}]
Blahs: [{1 0x1030e0c0} {2 0x1030e0c0}]
Blahs: []
Blahs: [{1 0x1030e0f0}]
kittenSays: nyan

which I think confirms that the struct is garbage collected. Oddly enough, uncommenting the commented print line, will yield different memory addresses for the meows:

Blahs: []
Blahs: [{1 0x1030e0c0}]
Blahs: [{1 0x1030e0c0} {2 0x1030e0c0}]
kittenSays: meow
Blahs: []
Blahs: [{1 0x1030e0f8}]
kittenSays: nyan

I think this may be due to the print being deferred in some way (?), but interesting illustration of some memory mgmt behavior, and one more vote for:

[]MyStruct = nil