Refer to constant or package level variable instead of function level variable

Question

package main

import "fmt"

const name = "Yosua"
// or var name string = "James"

func main() {
    name := "Jobs"
    fmt.Println(name)
}

How to refer to the constant and not the the function level variable?

Answer 1

You can't. While the local variable name is in scope, the name name denotes the local variable. And there is no "qualifier" to refer to top-level identifiers.

Spec: Declarations and scope:

An identifier declared in a block may be redeclared in an inner block. While the identifier of the inner declaration is in scope, it denotes the entity declared by the inner declaration.

If you need to access both the top-level constant/variable and the local variable at the same time, use different names.

If for some reason you can't or don't want to, you may save the value of the top-level constant or variable first:

cname := name
name := "Jobs"
fmt.Println(name)
fmt.Println(cname)

Or you may provide other means to access it, e.g. a function:

func getName() string {
    return name
}

name := "Jobs"
fmt.Println(name)
fmt.Println(getName())

Output in both cases (try them on the Go Playground):

Jobs
Yosua