How to concatenate strings in Go

In this post, we will look at a few ways to concatenate strings in Go

Concatenate using the ’+’ and ’+=’ operator

Most of the time we can use this simple method to concatenate strings and not worry about performance issues. Just use the ’+’ operator

firstname := "Stephen" 
lastname := "Hawking"

fullname := firstname + " " + lastname

fmt.Println(fullname)

Concatenate using ’+=’ operator

a := "testing"
b := " is essential"
a += b

fmt.Println(a)

When performing the concatenation operation inside a loop and when performance is important, you can use the below efficient method

Concatenate using String builder

We can use the strings package to perform efficient concatenation on strings. WriteString function can be used to add strings to the variable.

{var}.String() function is used to get the data in string type

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "strings"
)

func main() {
    

    var sb strings.Builder

    for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
        sb.WriteString(" Appending inside loop")
    }

    fmt.Println(sb.String())
}

1. Import the strings package which provides the strings.Builder type

2. Create a variable of strings.Builder type. This will initialize the variable to Zero-Value of that type which is an empty string

3. Appending the data to the string can be done using the WriteString function

4. When you want the data of the variable in string type, call the String() function

Summary

Simple concatenation can be done using the ’+’ operator and for a more efficient method using the “strings” package