By the way the nil prints out with fmt.Print* you would think that
the thing is there but just empty, when it fact it is not only empty, it
doesn’t exist and will throw panics for nil pointer if you try to do
anything with them. Only actual pointers print <nil> when output.
package main
import "fmt"
type blah struct {
names []string
tags map[string]string
pnames *blah
}
func main() {
b := blah{}
fmt.Println(b.names)
fmt.Println(b.names == nil)
fmt.Println(b.tags)
fmt.Println(b.tags == nil)
fmt.Println(b.pnames)
fmt.Println(b.pnames == nil)
}
Here’s the output:
[]
true
map[]
true
<nil>
true