Go Comments: Explaining and Controlling Your Code

Comments are essential for making your Go code readable, maintainable, and understandable to others (and yourself in the future). They provide a way to explain the purpose of code sections, document functions, and temporarily disable code without deleting it.

Single-Line Comments (//)

Used for short, concise explanations. Placed at the beginning or end of a line.

Code Snippet
// This is a single-line comment
x := 42 // This is a comment at the end of a line
Output
None

Multi-Line Comments (/* */)

Used for longer explanations or to block out multiple lines of code.

Code Snippet
/*
This is a multi-line comment.
It can span multiple lines.
*/
Output
None

Commenting to Prevent Code Execution

To temporarily disable a code section, enclose it within a multi-line comment:

Code Snippet
// This code is commented out and will not be executed
// fmt.Println("This line will not be printed")
Output
None

Best Practices for Comments

  • Be clear and concise: Write comments that accurately reflect the code's intent.
  • Avoid redundancy: Don't comment obvious code.
  • Update comments: Keep comments up-to-date as the code changes.
  • Use doc comments: For documenting public functions, types, and packages.

Doc Comments

Go supports a special type of comment called a doc comment. These comments are placed immediately before declarations and are used to generate documentation.

Code Snippet
// Add is a function that adds two integers.
func Add(x, y int) int {
    return x + y
}
Output
None

The go doc command can extract information from doc comments to generate documentation for your code.