panic and recover

what is it?

panic is a built-in function that stops the ordinary flow of control and begins panicking

recover is a built-in function that regains control of a panicking goroutine. is only useful inside deferred functions

see defer

example

example.go

package main
 
import "fmt"
 
func main() {
    f()
    fmt.Println("Returned normally from f.")
}
 
func f() {
    defer func() {
        if r := recover(); r != nil {
            fmt.Println("Recovered in f", r)
        }
    }()
    fmt.Println("Calling g.")
    g(0)
    fmt.Println("Returned normally from g.")
}
 
func g(i int) {
    if i > 3 {
        fmt.Println("Panicking!")
        panic(fmt.Sprintf("%v", i))
    }
    defer fmt.Println("Defer in g", i)
    fmt.Println("Printing in g", i)
    g(i + 1)
}

output

$ go run example.go
Calling g.
Printing in g 0
Printing in g 1
Printing in g 2
Printing in g 3
Panicking!
Defer in g 3
Defer in g 2
Defer in g 1
Defer in g 0
Recovered in f 4
Returned normally from f.

real-world example

convention in the go libraries is that even when a package uses panic internally, its external API still presents explicit error return values