Finding Unreachable Go Code

Let’s learn how to find unreachable Go code.

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Sometimes, a wrongly implemented if or a misplaced return statement can create blocks of code that are unreachable, that is, blocks of code that are not going to be executed at all. Because this is a logical kind of error, which means that it is not going to get caught by the compiler, we need to find a way of discovering it.

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Fortunately, the go vet tool, which examines Go source code and reports suspicious constructs, can help with that—the use of go vet is illustrated with the help of the cannotReach.go source code file, which contains the next two functions:

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Course Introduction

Introduction to Go

Basic Go Data Types

Composite Data Types

Reflection and Interfaces

Go Packages and Functions

Telling a UNIX System What to Do

Go Concurrency

Building Web Services

Working with TCP/IP and WebSocket

Working with REST APIs

Code Testing and Profiling

Working with gRPC

Go Generics

Conclusion

Appendix A—Go Garbage Collector

Finding Unreachable Go Code

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