Go Optimizations 101 (2024)

Acknowledgments
Firstly, thanks to the entire Go community. An active and responsive

community ensured this book was finished on time.
Specially, I want to give thanks to the following people who helped me

understand some details in the official standard compiler and runtime
implementations: Keith Randall, Ian Lance Taylor, Axel Wagner, Cuong
Manh Le, Michael Pratt, Jan Mercl, Matthew Dempsky, Martin Möhrmann,
etc. I'm sorry if I forgot mentioning somebody in the above list. There are
so many kind and creative gophers in the Go community that I must have
missed out on someone.
I also would like to thank all gophers who ever made influences on this
book, be it directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally.
Thanks to Olexandr Shalakhin for the permission to use one of the

wonderful gopher icon designs as the cover image. And thanks to Renee
French for designing the lovely gopher cartoon character.
Thanks to the authors of the following open source software and libraries
used in building this book:
golang, https://go.dev/
gomarkdown, https://github.com/gomarkdown/markdown
goini, https://github.com/zieckey/goini
go-epub, https://github.com/bmaupin/go-epub
pandoc, https://pandoc.org
calibre, https://calibre-ebook.com/
GIMP, https://www.gimp.org
Thanks the gophers who ever reported mistakes in this book or made
corrections for this book: yingzewen, ivanburak, cortes-, skeeto@reddit,
Yang Yang, DashJay, Stephan, etc.
About Go Optimizations 101
This book offers practical tricks, tips, and suggestions to optimize Go code
performance. Its insights are grounded in the official Go compiler and
runtime implementation.
Life is full of trade-offs, and so is the programming world. In programming,

we constantly balance trade-offs between code readability, maintainability,
development efficiency, and performance, and even within each of these
areas. For example, optimizing for performance often involves trade-offs
between memory savings, execution speed, and implementation complexity.
In real-world projects, most code sections don't demand peak performance.

Prioritizing maintainability and readability generally outweighs shaving
every byte or microsecond. This book focuses on optimizing critical
sections where performance truly matters. Be aware that some suggestions
might lead to more verbose code or only exhibit significant gains in specific
scenarios.
The contents in this book include:
how to consume less CPU resources.

how to consume less memory.
how to make less memory allocations.
how to control memory allocation places.
how to reduce garbage collection pressure.
This book neither explains how to use performance analysis tools, such as
pprof, nor tries to study deeply on compiler and runtime implementation
details. The books also doesn't introduce how to use profile-guided
optimization. None of the contents provided in this book make use of
unsafe pointers and cgo. And the book doesn't talk about algorithms. In
other words, this book tries to provide some optimization suggestions in a
way which is clear and easy to understand, for daily general Go
programming.
Without particularly indicated, the code examples provided in this book are
tested and run on a notebook with the following environment setup:
go version go1.22.1 linux/amd64

goos: linux
goarch: amd64
cpu: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4210U CPU @ 1.70GHz
Some benchmark times information is removed from benchmark results, to

keep benchmark lines short.
Please note that:
some of the talked suggestions in this book work on any platform and
for any CPU models, but some others might only work on specified
platforms and for specified CPU models. So please benchmark them
on the same environments as your production environments before
adopting any of them.
some implementation details of the official standard Go compiler and
runtime might change from version to version, which means some of
the talked suggestions might not work for future Go toolchain
versions.
the book will be open sourced eventually, in a chapter by chapter way.
About the author

Tapir is the author of this book. He also wrote the Go 101 book. He is
planning to write some other Go 101 series books. Please look forward to.
Tapir was ever (maybe will be again) an indie game developer. You can find
his games here: tapirgames.com.
About GoTV
During writing this book, the tool GoTV is used to manage installations of
multiple Go toolchain versions and check the behavior differences between
Go toolchain versions.
Feedback
Welcome to improve this book by submitting corrections to Go 101 issue
list (https://github.com/go101/go101) for all kinds of mistakes, such as
typos, grammar errors, wording inaccuracies, wrong explanations,
description flaws, code bugs, etc.
It is also welcome to send your feedback to the Go 101 twitter account:

@go100and1 (https://twitter.com/go100and1).
Value Parts and Value Sizes
Values and value parts
In Go, a value of some kinds of types always contains only one part (in
memory), whereas a value of other kinds of types might contain more than
one part. If a value contains more than one part, then one of the parts is
called the direct part and the others are called indirect parts. The direct part
references the indirect parts.
If a value always contains only one part, then the part may be also called as
the direct part of the value, and we say the value has no indirect parts.
In the official standard Go compiler implementation, each value of the

following kinds of types always contains only one part:
boolean types
numeric types (int8, uint8, int16, uint16, int32, uint32, int64, uint64,
int, uint, uintptr, float32, float64, complex64, complex128)
pointer types
unsafe pointer types
struct types
array types
And a value of the following kinds of types always may contain one or
more indirect parts:
slice types
map types
channel types
function types
interface types
string types
When assigning/copying a value, only the direct part of the value is copied.
After copying, the direct parts of the destination and source values both are
referencing the indirect parts of the source value (if the indirect parts exist).
At run time, each value part is carried on one memory block (memory
blocks will be explained in a following chapter). So, if a value contains two
parts, the value is very possibly distributed on two memory blocks.
(Note: The terminology value part was invented by the Go 101 series
books. It is not widely used in Go community. Personally, I think the
terminology makes some conveniences when making some explanations.)
Value/type sizes
The size of a value part means how many bytes are needed to be allocated
in memory to store the value part at run time.
The size of a value exactly equals to the size of the direct part of the value.
In other words, the indirect parts of a value don't contribute to the size of
the value. The reason? It has been mentioned above: when
assigning/copying a value, only the direct part of the value is copied and the
indirect parts might be shared by multiple values, so it is not a good idea to
let the same indirect parts contribute to value sizes.
In the official standard Go compiler implementation, the sizes of all values

of a specified type are all the same. So the same value size is also called as
the size of that type.
In the official standard Go compiler implementation, the sizes of all types

of the same type kind are the same, except struct and array type kinds. From
memory allocation point of view,
A struct values holds all its fields. In other words, a struct value is
composed of all its fields. At runtime, the fields of a struct are
allocated on the same memory block as the struct itself. Copying a
struct value means copying all the fields of the struct value. So all the
fields of a struct value contribute to the size of the struct value.
Like struct values, an array value holds all its elements. In other words,
an array is composed of all its elements. At runtime, the elements of an
array are allocated on the same memory block as the array itself.
Copying an array value means copying all the elements of the array
value. So all elements of an array contribute to the size of the array
value.
A pointer doesn't hold the value being referenced (pointed) by the pointer.
So the value being referenced by the pointer value doesn't contribute to the
size of the pointer value (so nil pointers and non-nil pointers have the same
size). The two values may be often allocated on two different memory
blocks, so copying one of them will not copy the other.
Internally, a slice uses a pointer (on the direct part) to reference all its
elements (on the indirect part). The length and capacity information (two
int values) of a slice is stored on the direct part of the slice. From memory
allocation point of view, it doesn't hold its elements. Its elements are
allocated on another (indirect) value part other than its direct part. When
assigning a slice value to another slice value, none elements of the slice get
copied. After assigning, the source slice and the destination slice both
reference (but not hold) the same elements. So the elements of a slice don't
contribute to the size of a specified slice. This is why the sizes of all slice
types are the same.
Like slice values, a map value just references all its entries and a buffered
channel value just references its elements being buffered.
In the official standard Go compiler implementation, map values, channel

values and function values are all represented as pointers internally. This
fact is important to understand some later introduced optimizations made by
the official standard Go compiler.
In the official standard Go compiler implementation,
a string just references all its containing bytes (on the indirect part),
though in logic, we can also think a string holds all its containing
bytes. The length information of a string is stored on the direct part of
the string as an int value.
an interface value just references its dynamic value, though in logic,
we can also think an interface value holds its dynamic value.
Detailed type sizes
The following table lists the sizes (used in the official standard Go
compiler) of all the 26 kinds of types in Go. In the table, one word means
one native word (4 bytes on 32-bit architectures and 8 bytes on 64-bit
architectures).
Type Kinds Value Size Required by Go Specification

Architecture dependent,
4 bytes on 32-bit
int, uint 1 word
architectures and 8 bytes on 64-bit
architectures.
int8, uint8
1 byte 1 byte
(byte)
int16, uint16 2 bytes 2 bytes
int32 (rune),
uint32, 4 bytes 4 bytes
float32
int64, uint64 8 bytes 8 bytes
float64,
8 bytes 8 bytes
complex64
complex128 16 bytes 16 bytes
Large enough to store
uintptr 1 word the uninterpreted bits
of a pointer value.
bool 1 byte Unspecified
Type Kinds Value Size Required by Go Specification
string 2 words Unspecified
(element value
size) The size of an array type is zero if its
array
* element type has a zero size.
(array length)
pointer (safe
1 word Unspecified
or unsafe)
slice 3 words Unspecified
map 1 word Unspecified
channel 1 word Unspecified
function 1 word Unspecified
interface 2 words Unspecified
(the sum of
sizes of all
fields) The size of a struct type is zero if it contains
struct
+ no fields that have a size greater than zero.
(the number of
padding bytes)
Struct padding will be explained in the section after next.
Memory alignments
To fully utilize CPU instructions and get the best performance, the (start)
addresses of the memory blocks allocated for (the direct parts of) values of
a specified type must be aligned as multiples of an integer N. Here N is
called the alignment guarantee of that type.
For a type T , we can call unsafe.Alignof(t) to get its general alignment

guarantee of type T , where t is a non-field value of type T , and call
unsafe.Alignof(x.t) to get its field alignment guarantee of type T , where
x is a struct value and t is a field value of type T . In the current standard
Go compiler implementation, the field alignment guarantee and the general
alignment guarantee of a type are always equal to each other.
The following table lists the alignment guarantees made by the official
standard Go compiler for all kinds of types. Again, one native word is 4
bytes on 32-bit architectures and 8 bytes on 64-bit architectures.
type alignment guarantee

bool, uint8, int8 1
uint16, int16 2
uint32, int32 4
float32, complex64 4
arrays depend on element types
structs depend on field types
other types size of a native word
The Go specification says:
For a variable x of a struct type: unsafe.Alignof(x) is the largest of

all the values unsafe.Alignof(x.f) for each field f of x , but at least
1.
For a variable x of an array type: unsafe.Alignof(x) is the same as

the alignment of a variable of the array's element type.
The official standard Go compiler ensures that the size of a type is a

multiple of the alignment guarantee of the type.
Struct padding
To satisfy type alignment guarantee rules mentioned previously, Go
compilers may pad some bytes after certain fields of struct values. The
padded bytes are counted for struct sizes. So the size of a struct type may be
not a simple sum of the sizes of all its fields.
For example, the size of the struct type shown in the following code is 24
on 64-bit architectures.
type T1 struct {
a int8
// 7 bytes are padded here
b int64
c int16
// 6 bytes are padded here.
}
The reason why its size is 24:
The alignment guarantee of the struct type is the same as its largest
alignment guarantee of its filed types. Here is the alignment guarantee
(8, a native word) of type int64 . This means the distance between the
address of the field b and a of a value of the struct type is a multiple
of 8. Clever compilers should choose the minimum possible value: 8.
To get the desired alignment, 7 bytes are padded after the field a .
The size of the struct type must be a multiple of the alignment
guarantee of the struct type. So considering the existence of the field
c, the minimum possible size is 24 (8x3), which should be used by
clever compilers. To get the desired size, 6 bytes are padded after the
field c .
Field orders matter in struct type size calculations. If we change the orders
of field b and c of the above struct type, then the size of the struct will
become to 16.
type T2 struct {
a int8
// 1 byte is padded here
c int16
// 4 bytes are padded here.
b int64
}
We can use the unsafe.Sizeof function to get value/type sizes. For

example:
package main
import "unsafe"
type T1 struct {
a int8
b int64
c int16
}
type T2 struct {
a int8
c int16
b int64
}
func main(){
// The printed values are got on
// 64-bit architectures.
println(unsafe.Sizeof(T1{})) // 24
println(unsafe.Sizeof(T2{})) // 16
}
We can view the padding bytes as a form of memory wasting, a trade-off

result between program performance, code readability and memory saving.
In practice, generally, we should make related fields adjacent to get good

readability, and only order fields in the most memory saving way when it
really needs.
Value copy costs and small-size types/values

The cost of copying a value is approximately proportional to the size of the
value. In reality, CPU caches, CPU instructions and compiler optimizations
might also affect value copy costs.
Value copying operations often happen in value assignments. More value
copying operations will be listed in the next section.
To achieve high code execution performance, if it is possible, we should try

to avoid
copying a large quantity of large-size values in a loop.

copying very-large-size arrays and structs.
Some types in Go belong to small-size types. Copying their values is

specially optimized by the official standard Go compiler so that the copy
cost is always small.
But what are small-size types? There is not a formal definition. In fact, the
definition depends on specific CPU architectures and compiler
implementations. In the official standard Go compiler implementation,
except large-size struct and array types, all other types in Go could be
viewed as small-size types.
What are small-size struct and array values? There is also not a formal
definition. The official standard Go compiler tweaks some implementation
details from version to version. However, in practice, we can view struct
types with no more than 4 native-word-size fields and array types with no
more than 4 native-word-size elements as small-size values, such as
struct{a, b, c, d int} , struct{element *T; len int; cap int} and
[4]uint .
For the official standard Go compiler 1.22 versions, a copy cost leap
happens between copying 9-element arrays and copying 10-element arrays
(the element size is one native word). The similar is for copying 9-field
structs and copying 10-field structs (each filed size is one native word).
The proof:
package copycost
import "testing"
const N = 1024
type Element = uint64
var a9r [N][9]Element

func Benchmark_CopyArray_9_elements(b *testing.B) {
var a9s [N][9]Element
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
for k := range a9s { a9r[k] = a9s[k] }
}
}
var a10r [N][10]Element

func Benchmark_CopyArray_10_elements(b *testing.B) {
var a10s [N][10]Element
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
for k := range a10s { a10r[k] = a10s[k] }
}
}
type S9 struct{ a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i Element }

var s9r [N]S9
func Benchmark_CopyStruct_9_fields(b *testing.B) {
var s9s [N]S9
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
for k := range s9s { s9r[k] = s9s[k] }
}
}
type S10 struct{ a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j Element }

var s10r [N]S10
func Benchmark_CopyStruct_10_fields(b *testing.B) {
var s10s [N]S10
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
for k := range s10s { s10r[k] = s10s[k] }
}
}
The benchmark results:
Benchmark_CopyArray_9_elements-4 3974 ns/op

Benchmark_CopyArray_10_elements-4 8896 ns/op
Benchmark_CopyStruct_9_fields-4 2970 ns/op
Benchmark_CopyStruct_10_fields-4 8471 ns/op
This results indicate copying arrays with less than 10 elements and structs
with less than 10 fields might be specially optimized.
The official standard Go compiler might use different criteria for other
scenarios to determine what are small struct and array types. For example,
in the following benchmark code, the Add4 function consumes much less
CPU resources than the Add5 function (with the official standard Go
compiler 1.22 versions).
package copycost
import "testing"
type T4 struct{a, b, c, d float32}

type T5 struct{a, b, c, d, e float32}
var t4 T4
var t5 T5
//go:noinline
func Add4(x, y T4) (z T4) {
z.a = x.a + y.a
z.b = x.b + y.b
z.c = x.c + y.c
z.d = x.d + y.d
return
}
//go:noinline
func Add5(x, y T5) (z T5) {
z.a = x.a + y.a
z.b = x.b + y.b
z.c = x.c + y.c
z.d = x.d + y.d
z.e = x.e + y.e
return
}
func Benchmark_Add4(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
var x, y T4
t4 = Add4(x, y)
}
}
func Benchmark_Add5(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
var x, y T5
t5 = Add5(x, y)
}
}
Benchmark_Add4-4 2.649 ns/op

Benchmark_Add5-4 19.15 ns/op
The //go:noinline compiler directives used here are to prevent the calls
to the two function from being inlined. If the directives are removed, the
Add4 function will become even more performant.
Value copy scenarios

In Go programming, besides value assignments, there are also several other
operations involving value copying:
box non-interface values into interfaces (convert non-interface values

into interfaces).
pass parameters and return results when calling functions.
receive values from and send values to channels.
put entries into maps.
append elements to slices.
iterate container elements/entries with for-range loop code blocks.
since Go 1.22, (implicitly) duplicate loop variables of 3-clause for-
loops.
The following are several examples which show the costs of copying some
large-size values.
Example 1:
package copycost
import "testing"
const N = 1024
//go:noinline
func Sum_RangeArray(a [N]int) (r int) {
for _, v := range a {
r += v
}
return
}
//go:noinline
func Sum_RangeArrayPtr1(a *[N]int) (r int) {
for _, v := range *a {
r += v
}
return
}
//go:noinline
func Sum_RangeArrayPtr2(a *[N]int) (r int) {
r += v
}
return
}
//go:noinline
func Sum_RangeSlice(a []int) (r int) {
r += v
}
return
}
//===========
var r [128]int
func buildArray() [N]int {

var a [N]int
for i := 0; i < N; i ++ {
a[i] = (N-i)&i
}
return a
}
func Benchmark_Sum_RangeArray(b *testing.B) {

var a = buildArray()
b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = Sum_RangeArray(a)
}
}
func Benchmark_Sum_RangeArrayPtr1(b *testing.B) {
b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = Sum_RangeArrayPtr1(&a)
}
}
func Benchmark_Sum_RangeArrayPtr2(b *testing.B) {

b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = Sum_RangeArrayPtr2(&a)
}
}
func Benchmark_Sum_RangeSlice(b *testing.B) {

b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = Sum_RangeSlice(a[:])
}
}
Benchmark_Sum_RangeArray-4 897.6 ns/op

Benchmark_Sum_RangeArrayPtr1-4 799.3 ns/op
Benchmark_Sum_RangeArrayPtr2-4 555.3 ns/op
Benchmark_Sum_RangeSlice-4 561.7 ns/op
From the results, we could find that the Sum_RangeArray function is the
slowest one. This is not surprising, because the array value is copied twice
in calling this function. One copy happens when passing the array as the
argument (arguments are passed by copy in Go), the other happens when
ranging over the array parameter (the direct part of the container following
the range keyword will be copied if the second iteration variable is used).
The Sum_RangeArrayPtr1 function is faster than Sum_RangeArray , because

the array value is only copied once in calling this function. The copy
happens when range over the array.
No array copying happens in the calls to the remaining two functions, so

those two functions are both the fastest ones.
Example 2:
package copycost
import "testing"
type Element [10]int64
//go:noinline
func Sum_PlainForLoop(s []Element) (r int64) {
for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
r += s[i][0]
}
return
}
//go:noinline
func Sum_OneIterationVar(s []Element) (r int64) {
for i := range s {
r += s[i][0]
}
return
}
//go:noinline
func Sum_UseSecondIterationVar(s []Element) (r int64) {
for _, v := range s {
r += v[0]
}
return
}
//===================
func buildSlice() []Element {

var s = make([]Element, 1000)
for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
s[i] = Element{0: int64(i)}
}
return s
}
var r [128]int64
func Benchmark_PlainForLoop(b *testing.B) {

var s = buildSlice()
b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = Sum_PlainForLoop(s)
}
}
func Benchmark_OneIterationVar(b *testing.B) {

b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = Sum_OneIterationVar(s)
}
}
func Benchmark_UseSecondIterationVar(b *testing.B) {

b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = Sum_UseSecondIterationVar(s)
}
}
Benchmark_PlainForLoop-4 911.8 ns/op

Benchmark_OneIterationVar-4 929.3 ns/op
Benchmark_UseSecondIterationVar-4 3753 ns/op
From the results, we could learn that the performance of function

Sum_UseSecondIterationVar is much lower than the Sum_PlainForLoop
and Sum_OneIterationVar functions. The reason is every element is
copied to the iteration variable v in the function
Sum_UseSecondIterationVar , and the copy cost is not small (the type
Element is not a small-size type). The other two functions avoid the copies.
Example 3:
package copycost
import "testing"
type S struct {a, b, c, d, e int}
//go:noinline
func sum_UseSecondIterationVar(s []S) int {
var sum int
sum += v.c
sum += v.d
sum += v.e
}
return sum
}
//go:noinline
func sum_OneIterationVar_Index(s []S) int {
var sum int
for i := range s {
sum += s[i].c
sum += s[i].d
sum += s[i].e
}
return sum
}
//go:noinline
func sum_OneIterationVar_Ptr(s []S) int {
var sum int
for i := range s {
v := &s[i]
sum += v.c
sum += v.d
sum += v.e
}
return sum
}
var s = make([]S, 1000)

var r [128]int
func init() {
for i := range s {
s[i] = S{i, i, i, i, i}
}
}
func Benchmark_UseSecondIterationVar(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = sum_UseSecondIterationVar(s)
}
}
func Benchmark_OneIterationVar_Index(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = sum_OneIterationVar_Index(s)
}
}
func Benchmark_OneIterationVar_Ptr(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = sum_OneIterationVar_Ptr(s)
}
}
Benchmark_UseSecondIterationVar-4 2208 ns/op

Benchmark_OneIterationVar_Index-4 1212 ns/op
Benchmark_OneIterationVar_Ptr-4 1182 ns/op
Again, the implementation using the second iteration variable is the

slowest.
Please note that, if we reduce the field count from 5 to 4 in the above
example, then there is no performance differences between the three
functions. The reason has been mentioned above. A struct type with no
more than 4 fields of native word size is treated as a small-size type.
Example 4:
// demo-largesize-loop-var.go
package main
import (
"fmt"
"time"
)
type Large [1<<12]byte
func foo() {
for a, i := (Large{}), 0; i < len(a); i++ {
readOnly(&a, i)
}
}
func readOnly(x *Large, k int) {}
func main() {
bench := func() time.Duration {
start := time.Now()
foo()
return time.Since(start)
}
fmt.Println("elapsed time:", bench())
}
Run it with different Go toolchain versions:
$ gotv 1.21. run demo-largesize-loop-var.go

[Run]: $HOME/.cache/gotv/tag_go1.21.8/bin/go run demo-
largesize-loop-var.go
elapsed time: 1.829µs
$ gotv 1.22. run demo-largesize-loop-var.go
[Run]: $HOME/.cache/gotv/tag_go1.22.1/bin/go run demo-
largesize-loop-var.go
elapsed time: 989.507µs
From the outputs, we can find that the semantic changes made in Go 1.22
causes significant performance regression for the above code. So, when
using Go toolchain 1.22+ versions, try not to declare large-size values as
loop variables.
Memory Allocations
Memory blocks
The basic memory allocation units are called memory blocks. A memory
block is a continuous memory segment. As aforementioned, at run time, a
value part is carried on a single memory block.
A single memory block might carry multiple value parts. The size of a
memory block must not be smaller than the size of any value part it carries.
When a memory block is carrying a value part, we may say the value part is
referencing the memory bock.
Memory allocation operations will consume some CPU resources to find

the suitable memory blocks. So the more memory blocks are created (for
memory allocations), the more CPU resources are consumed. In
programming, we should try to avoid unnecessary memory allocations to
get better code execution performances.
Memory allocation places

Go runtime might find a memory block on the stack (one kind of memory
zone) of a goroutine or the heap (the other kind of memory zone) of the
whole program to carry some value parts. The finding-out process is called
a (memory) allocation.
The memory management manners of stack and heap are quite different.
For most cases, finding a memory block on stack is much cheaper than on
heap.
Collecting stack memory blocks is also much cheaper than collecting heap
memory blocks. In fact, stack memory blocks don't need to be collected.
The stack of a goroutine could be actually viewed as a single memory
block, and it will be collected as a whole when the goroutine exits.
On the other hand, when all the value parts being carried on/by a heap
memory block are not used any more (in other words, no alive value part is
still referencing the memory block), the memory block will be viewed as
garbage and automatically collected eventually, during runtime garbage
collection cycles, which might consume certain CPU resources (garbage
collection will be talked in detail in a later chapter). Generally, the more
memory blocks are allocated on heap, the larger pressure is made for
garbage collection.
As heap allocations are much more expensive, only heap memory

allocations contribute to the allocation metrics in Go code benchmark
results. But please note that allocating on stack still has a cost, though it is
often comparatively much smaller.
The escape analysis module of a Go compiler could detect some value parts
will be only used by one goroutine and try to let those value parts allocated
on stack at run time if certain extra conditions are satisfied. Stack memory
allocations and escape analysis will be explained with more details in the
next chapter.
Memory allocation scenarios
Generally, each of the following operations will make at least one
allocation.
declare variables
call the built-in new function.
call the built-in make function.
modify slices and maps with composite literals.
convert integers to strings.
concatenate strings by using use + .
convert between strings to byte slices, and vice versa.
convert strings to rune slices.
box values into interfaces (converting non-interface values into
interfaces).
append elements to a slice and the capacity of the slice is not large
enough.
put new entries into maps and the underlying array (to store entries) of
the map is not large enough to store the new entries.
However, the official standard Go compiler makes some special code

optimizations so that at certain cases, some of the above listed operations
will not make allocations. These optimizations will be introduced later in
this book.
Memory wasting caused by allocated memory

blocks larger than needed
The sizes of different memory blocks might be different. But they are not
arbitrary. In the official standard Go runtime implementation, for memory
blocks allocated on heap,
some memory block size classes (no more than 32768 bytes) are
predefined. As of the official standard Go compiler version 1.22.x, the
smallest size classes are 8, 16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 80 and 96 bytes.
For memory blocks larger than 32768 bytes, each of them is always
composed of multiple memory pages. The memory page size used by
the official standard Go runtime (1.22 versions) is 8192 bytes.
So,
to allocate a (heap) memory block for the value which size is in the
range [33, 48] , the size of the memory block is general (must be at
least) 48. In other words, there might be up to 15 bytes wasted (if the
value size is 33).
to create a byte slice with 32769 elements on heap, the size of the
memory block carrying the elements of the slice is 40960 (32768 +
8192, 5 memory pages). In other words, 8191 bytes are wasted.
In other words, memory blocks are often larger than needed. The strategies
are made to manage memory easily and efficiently, but might cause a bit
memory wasting sometimes (yes, a trade-off).
These could be proved by the following program:
package main
import "testing"
import "unsafe"
var t *[5]int64
var s []byte
func f(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
t = &[5]int64{}
}
}
func g(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
s = make([]byte, 32769)
}
}
func main() {
println(unsafe.Sizeof(*t)) // 40
rf := testing.Benchmark(f)
println(rf.AllocedBytesPerOp()) // 48
rg := testing.Benchmark(g)
println(rg.AllocedBytesPerOp()) // 40960
}
Another example:
package main
import "testing"
var s = []byte{32: 'b'} // len(s) == 33

var r string
func Concat(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = string(s) + string(s)
}
}
func main() {
br := testing.Benchmark(Concat)
println(br.AllocsPerOp()) // 3
println(br.AllocedBytesPerOp()) // 176
}
There are 3 allocations made within the Concat function. Two of them are
caused by the byte slice to string conversions string(s) , and the sizes of
the two memory blocks carrying the underlying bytes of the two result
strings are both 48 (which is the smallest size class which is not smaller
than 33). The third allocation is caused by the string concatenation, and the
size of the result memory block is 80 (the smallest size class which is not
smaller than 66). The three allocations allocate 176 (48+48+80) bytes
totally. In the end, 14 bytes are wasted. And 44 (15 + 15 + 14) bytes are
wasted during executing the Concat function.
In the above example, the results of the string(s) conversions are used
temporarily in the string concatenation operation. By the current official
standard Go compiler/runtime implementation (1.22 versions), the string
bytes are allocated on heap (see below sections for details). After the
concatenation is done, the memory blocks carrying the string bytes become
into memory garbage and will be collected eventually later.
Reduce memory allocations and save memory

The less memory (block) allocations are made, the less CPU resources are
consumed, and the smaller pressure is made for garbage collection.
Memory is cheap nowadays, but this is not true for the memory sold by
cloud computing providers. So if we run programs on cloud servers, the
more memory is saved by the Go programs, the more money is saved.
The following are some suggestions to reduce memory allocations and save
memory in programming.
Avoid unnecessary allocations by allocating enough

in advance
We often use the built-in append function to push some slice elements. In
the statement r = append(s, elements...) , if the free capacity of s is
not large enough to hold all appended elements, Go runtime will allocate a
new memory block to hold all the elements of the result slice r .
If the append function needs to be called multiple times to push some

elements, it is best to ensure that the base slice has a large enough capacity,
to avoid several unnecessary allocations in the whole pushing process.
For example, to merge some slices into one, the following shown
MergeWithTwoLoops implementation is more efficient than the
MergeWithOneLoop implementation, because the former one makes less
allocations and copies less values.
package allocations
import "testing"
func getData() [][]int {

return [][]int{
{1, 2},
{9, 10, 11},
{6, 2, 3, 7},
{11, 5, 7, 12, 16},
{8, 5, 6},
}
}
func MergeWithOneLoop(data ...[]int) []int {

var r []int
for _, s := range data {
r = append(r, s...)
}
return r
}
func MergeWithTwoLoops(data ...[]int) []int {

n := 0
n += len(s)
}
r := make([]int, 0, n)
r = append(r, s...)
}
return r
}
func Benchmark_MergeWithOneLoop(b *testing.B) {

data := getData()
b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
_ = MergeWithOneLoop(data...)
}
}
func Benchmark_MergeWithTwoLoops(b *testing.B) {

data := getData()
b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
_ = MergeWithTwoLoops(data...)
}
}
Benchmark_MergeWithOneLoop-4 636.6 ns/op 352 B/op 4

allocs/op
Benchmark_MergeWithTwoLoops-4 268.4 ns/op 144 B/op 1
allocs/op
The benchmark results show that allocations affect code execution

performance much.
Let's print some logs to see when each of the 4 allocations happens in a
MergeWithOneLoop function call.
package main
import "fmt"
func getData() [][]int {

return [][]int{
{1, 2},
{9, 10, 11},
{6, 2, 3, 7},
{11, 5, 7, 12, 16},
{8, 5, 6},
}
}
const format = "Allocate from %v to %v (when append

slice#%v).\n"
func MergeWithOneLoop(data [][]int) []int {

var oldCap int
var r []int
for i, s := range data {
r = append(r, s...)
if oldCap == cap(r) {
continue
}
fmt.Printf(format, oldCap, cap(r), i)
oldCap = cap(r)
}
return r
}
func main() {
MergeWithOneLoop(getData())
}
The outputs (for the official standard Go compiler v1.22.1):
Allocate from 0 to 2 (when append slice#0).

From the outputs, we could get that only the last append call doesn't
allocate.
In fact, the Merge_TwoLoops function could be faster in theory. As of the

official standard Go compiler version 1.22, the make call in the
Merge_TwoLoop function will zero all just created elements, which is
actually unnecessary. Compiler optimizations in future versions might
avoid the zero operation.
BTW, the above implementation of the Merge_TwoLoops function has an

imperfection. It doesn't handle the integer overflowing case. The following
is a better implementation.
func Merge_TwoLoops(data ...[][]byte) []byte {

n := 0
if k := n + len(s); k < n {
panic("slice length overflows")
} else {
n = k
}
}
r := make([]int, 0, n)
...
}
Avoid allocations if possible

Allocating less is better, but allocating none is the best.
The following is another example to show the performance differences

between two implementations. One of the implementations makes no
allocations, the other one makes one allocation.
package allocations
import "testing"
func buildOrginalData() []int {

s := make([]int, 1024)
for i := range s {
s[i] = i
}
return s
}
func check(v int) bool {

return v%2 == 0
}
func FilterOneAllocation(data []int) []int {

var r = make([]int, 0, len(data))
for _, v := range data {
if check(v) {
r = append(r, v)
}
}
return r
}
func FilterNoAllocations(data []int) []int {

var k = 0
for i, v := range data {
if check(v) {
data[i] = data[k]
data[k] = v
k++
}
}
return data[:k]
}
func Benchmark_FilterOneAllocation(b *testing.B) {

data := buildOrginalData()
b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
_ = FilterOneAllocation(data)
}
}
func Benchmark_FilterNoAllocations(b *testing.B) {

data := buildOrginalData()
b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
_ = FilterNoAllocations(data)
}
}
Benchmark_FilterOneAllocation-4 7263 ns/op 8192 B/op 1

allocs/op
Benchmark_FilterNoAllocations-4 903.3 ns/op 0 B/op 0
allocs/op
From the benchmark results, we could get that the FilterNoAllocations

implementation is more performant. (Surely, if the input data is not allowed
to be modified, then we have to choose an implementation which makes
allocations.)
Save memory and reduce allocations by combining

memory blocks
Sometimes, we could allocate one large memory block to carry many value
parts instead of allocating a small memory block for each value part. Doing
this will reduce many memory allocations, so less CPU resources are
consumed and GC pressure is relieved to some extend. Sometimes, doing
this could decrease memory wasting, but this is not always true.
Let's view an example:
package allocations
import "testing"
const N = 100
type Book struct {

Title string
Author string
Pages int
}
//go:noinline
func CreateBooksOnOneLargeBlock(n int) []*Book {
books := make([]Book, n)
pbooks := make([]*Book, n)
for i := range pbooks {
pbooks[i] = &books[i]
}
return pbooks
}
//go:noinline
func CreateBooksOnManySmallBlocks(n int) []*Book {
books := make([]*Book, n)
for i := range books {
books[i] = new(Book)
}
return books
}
func Benchmark_CreateBooksOnOneLargeBlock(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
_ = CreateBooksOnOneLargeBlock(N)
}
}
func Benchmark_CreateBooksOnManySmallBlocks(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
_ = CreateBooksOnManySmallBlocks(N)
}
}
Run the benchmarks, we get:
Benchmark_CreateOnOneLargeBlock-4 4372 ns/op 4992 B/op

2 allocs/op
Benchmark_CreateOnManySmallBlocks-4 18017 ns/op 5696 B/op
101 allocs/op
From the results, we could get that allocating many small value parts on one
large memory block
1. spends much less CPU time.

2. consumes a bit less memory.
The first conclusion is easy to understand. Two allocation operations spend

much less time than 101 allocation operations.
The second conclusion has actually already been explained before. As

aforementioned, when the size of a small value (part) doesn't exactly match
any memory block classes supported by the official standard Go runtime,
then a bit larger memory block than needed will be allocated for the small
value (part) if the small value (part) is created individually. The size of the
Book type is 40 bytes (on 64-bit architectures), whereas the size of the
smallest memory block size class larger than 40 is 48. So allocating a Book
value individually will waste 8 bytes.
In fact, the second conclusion is only right under certain conditions.

Specifically, the conclusion is not right when the value N is in the range
from 820 to 852. In particular, when N == 820, the benchmark results show
allocating many small value parts on one large memory block consumes
3.5% more memory.
Benchmark_CreateOnOneLargeBlock-4 30491 ns/op 47744 B/op

2 allocs/op
Benchmark_CreateOnManySmallBlocks-4 145204 ns/op 46144 B/op
821 allocs/op
Why does the CreateBooksOnOneLargeBlock function consume more

memory when N == 820? Because it needs to allocate a memory block with
the minimum size as 32800 (820 * 40), which is larger than the largest
small memory block class 32768. So the memory block needs 5 memory
pages, which total size is 40960 (8192 * 5). In other words, 8160 (40960 -
32800) bytes are wasted.
Despite it sometimes wastes more memory, generally speaking, allocating

many small value parts on one large memory block is comparatively better
than allocating each of them on a separated memory block. This is
especially true when the life times of the small value parts are almost the
same, in which case allocating many small value parts on one large memory
block could often effectively avoid memory fragmentation.
Use value cache pool to avoid some allocations

Sometimes, we need to frequently allocate and discard values of a specified
type from time to time. It is a good idea to reuse allocated values to avoid a
large quantity of allocations.
For example, there are many non-player characters (NPC) in RTS games. A
large quantity of NPCs will be spawned and destroyed from time to time in
a game session. The related code is like
type NPC struct {

name [64]byte
nameLen uint16
blood uint16
properties uint32
x, y float64
}
func SpawnNPC(name string, x, y float64) *NPC {

var npc = newNPC()
npc.nameLen = uint16(copy(npc.name[:], name))
npc.x = x
npc.y = y
return npc
}
func newNPC() *NPC {

return &NPC{}
}
func releaseNPC(npc *NPC) {

}
As Go supports automatic GC, the releaseNPC function may do nothing.
However, such implementation will lead to a large quantity of allocations in
game playing and cause large pressure for garbage collection, so that it is
hard to guarantee a good game FPS (frames per second).
We could instead use a cache pool to reduce allocations, like the code
shown below.
import "container/list"
var npcPool = struct {

sync.Mutex
*list.List
}{
List: list.New(),
}
func newNPC() *NPC {

npcPool.Lock()
defer npcPool.Unlock()
if npcPool.Len() == 0 {
return &NPC{}
}
return npcPool.Remove(npcPool.Front()).(*NPC)
}
func releaseNPC(npc *NPC) {

npcPool.Lock()
defer npcPool.Unlock()
*npc = NPC{} // zero the released NPC
npcPool.PushBack(npc)
}
By using the pool (also called free list), allocations of NPC values will be
reduced much, which is very helpful to keep a smooth FPS (frames per
second) in game playing.
If the cache pool is used in only one goroutine, then concurrency

synchronizations are not necessary in the implementation.
We could also set a max size for the pool to avoid the pool occupies too
much memory.
The standard sync package provides a Pool type to provide similar

functionalities but with several design differences:
a free object in the a sync.Pool will be automatically garbage

collected if it is found to be unused in two successive garbage
collection cycles. This means the max size of a sync.Pool is dynamic
and depends on the demand at run time.
the types and sizes of the objects in a sync.Pool could be different.
But the best practice is to make sure the objects put in the same
sync.Pool are of the some type and have the same size.
Personally, I find the design of sync.Pool seldom satisfies the needs in

practice. So I often use custom value cache pool implementations in my Go
projects.
Stack and Escape Analysis
Goroutine stacks
In the last chapter, it is mentioned that some memory blocks will be
allocated on stack(s), one of the two kinds of memory zones.
When a new goroutine is created, Go runtime will create a stack memory

zone for the goroutine. The current official standard Go runtime uses
contiguous stacks (instead of segmented stacks), which means the stack
memory zone is a single continuous memory segment.
Allocating memory blocks on stack is generally much faster than on heap,

which will be explained in the following sections. Memory blocks allocated
on stack don't need to be garbage collected, which is another big advantage
over memory blocks allocated on heap. Thirdly, memory blocks allocated
on stack are also often more CPU cache friendly than the ones allocated on
heap.
So, generally speaking, if it is possible, the official standard Go compiler

will let Go runtime try to allocate memory blocks on stack.
Escape analysis
Not all value parts are capable of being allocated on stack. One principle
condition to allocate a value part on stack is the value part will be only used
in one goroutine (the current one) during its life time. Generally, if the
compiler detects a value part is used by more than one goroutine or it is
unable to make sure whether or not the value part is used by only one
goroutine, then it will let the value part allocated on heap. We also say the
value part escapes (to heap).
The job of determining which value parts could be allocated on stack is

handled by the escape analysis module of a Go compiler. However,
situations are often complicated in practice so that it is almost impossible
for the escape analysis module to find out all such value parts at compile
time. And a more powerful escape analysis implementation will increase
compilation time much. So, at run time, some value parts will be allocated
on heap even if they could be safely allocated on stack.
Please note that a value part could be allocated on stack doesn't mean the
value part will be allocated on stack for sure at run time. If the size of the
value part is too large, then the compiler will still let the value part allocated
on heap anyway. The size thresholds used in the official standard Go
compiler will be introduced in later sections of this chapter.
The basic escape analysis units are functions. Only the local values will be
escape analyzed. All package-level variables are allocated on heap for sure.
Value parts allocated on heap may be referenced by value parts allocated on

either heap or stack, but value parts allocated on a stack may be only
referenced by value parts allocated on the same stack. So if a value part is
being referenced by another value part allocated in heap, then the former
one (the referenced one) must be also allocated on heap. This means value
parts being referenced by package-level variables must be heap allocated.
Escape analysis examples
The -m compiler option is used to show escape analysis result. Let's view
an example.
// escape.go
package main
func main() {
var (
a = 1 // moved to heap: a
b = false
c = make(chan struct{})
)
go func() {
if b {
a++
}
close(c)
}()
<-c
println(a, b) // 1 false
}
Run it with the -m compiler option:
$ go run -gcflags=-m escape.go

# command-line-arguments
./escape.go:10:5: can inline main.func1
./escape.go:6:3: moved to heap: a
./escape.go:10:5: func literal escapes to heap
1 false
From the outputs, we know that the variable a escapes to heap but the
variable b is allocated on stack. What about the variable c ? The direct part
of channel c is allocated on stack. The indirect parts of channels are always
allocated on heap, so escape messages for channel indirect parts are always
omitted.
Why the variable b is allocated on stack but the variable a escapes? Aren't
they both used on two goroutines? The reason is that the escape analysis
module is so smart that it detects the variable b is never modified and
thinks it is a good idea to use a (hidden implicit) copy of the variable b in
the new goroutine.
Let's add one new line b = !b before the print line and run it again.
// escape.go
package main
func main() {
var (
b = false // moved to heap: b
)
go func() {
if b {
a++
}
close(c)
}()
<-c
b = !b
println(a, b) // 1 true
}
The outputs:
./escape.go:10:5: can inline main.func1

./escape.go:6:3: moved to heap: a
./escape.go:7:3: moved to heap: b
./escape.go:10:5: func literal escapes to heap
1 true
Now both the variable a and the variable b escape. In fact, for this
specified example, the compiler could still use a copy of variable b in the
new goroutine. But it is too expensive to let the escape analysis module
analyze the concurrency synchronizations used in code.
For the similar reason, the escape analysis module also doesn't try to check
whether or not the variable a will be really modified. If we change b to a
constant, then the variable a will be allocated on stack, because the line
a++ will be optimized away.
Stack frames of function calls

At compile time, the Go compiler will calculate the maximum possible
stack size a function will use at run time. The calculated size is called the
stack frame size of the function. In the calculation, all code branches will be
considered, even if some of them will not get executed at run time.
We may use the -S compiler option to show function stack frame sizes.
Let's use the following program as an example:
// frame.go
package main
import (
"fmt"
"math/rand"
)
func bar(s []uint32, n byte) (r byte) {

s = s[:1250]
var a [5000]byte // 5000 == 1250 * 4
for i, v := range s {
a[i * 4 + 0] = byte(v >> 0)
a[i * 4 + 1] = byte(v >> 8)
a[i * 4 + 2] = byte(v >> 16)
a[i * 4 + 3] = byte(v >> 24)
}
var v = a[0]
for i := 1; i < len(a); i++ {
r += v ^ a[i]
v = a[i]
}
return
}
func foo(n byte) uint16 {

var a [2500]uint32
for i := range a {
a[i] = rand.Uint32()
}
x := bar(a[:1250], n)
y := bar(a[1250:], ^n)
return uint16(x) << 8 | uint16(y)
}
func main() {
x := foo(123)
fmt.Println(x)
duck()
}
var v interface{}
//go:noinline
func duck() {
if v != nil {
v = [16000]byte{}
panic("unreachable")
}
}
Run it with the -S compiler option, we will get the following outputs (some
texts are omitted):
$ go run -gcflags=-S frame.go

...
... TEXT "".bar(SB), ABIInternal, $5024-32
...
... TEXT "".foo(SB), ABIInternal, $10056-8
...
... TEXT "".main(SB), ABIInternal, $64-0
...
... TEXT "".duck(SB), ABIInternal, $16024-0
...
From the outputs, we could get

the frame size of the bar function is 5024 bytes.
the frame size of the foo function is 10056 bytes.
the frame size of the main function is 64 bytes.
the frame size of the duck function is 16024 bytes. Please note that,
although the duck function is a de facto dummy function, its frame
size is not zero. This fact will be made use of in a code optimization
trick shown later.
At run time, before entering the execution of a function call, Go runtime

will mark out a memory segment on the current stack for the call (to
allocate stack memory blocks). The memory segment is called the stack
frame of the function call and its size is the stack frame size of the called
function. As mentioned above, the frame size is calculated at compile time.
When a value (part) within a function is determined to be allocated on

stack, its memory address offset (relative to the start of the stack frame of
any call to the function) is also determined, at compile time. At run time,
once the stack frame of a call to the function is marked out, the memory
addresses of all value parts allocated on the stack within the function call
are all determined consequently, which is why allocating memory blocks on
stack is much faster than on heap.
Stacks growth and shrinkage

At run time, a cursor is used to mark the boundary between the used part
and available part on the stack of a goroutine. The cursor will move
forwards (towards the available part) when entering a deeper function call
and move backwards (towards the used part) when a function call fully
exits. The move-forwards and move-backwards step sizes are equal to the
stack frame size of the respective called functions. Go runtime uses this
way to mark out stack frames for function calls.
The stack size of a goroutine might be dynamic at run time. In the

implementation of the official standard Go runtime, before version 1.19, the
initial size of a stack is always 2KiB; since version 1.19, the initial size is
adaptive, but the default initial stack size is still 2KiB.
For some goroutines, as function calls go deeper and deeper, more and more
function call stack frames are needed on the stack, the current stack size
might become insufficient. So stacks will grow on demand during the
execution of a goroutine. On the contrary, when the function call depth
become shallower and shallower, the stack size of a goroutine will become
too large. So stacks might also shrinkage. However, to avoid growing and
shrinking frequently, a stack will not shrink immediately as soon as it
becomes too large. The stack of a goroutine will shrink only when it is
found too large during a garbage collection cycle and the goroutine isn't
doing anything or sitting in a system call or a cgo call. Each stack shrinkage
halves the old stack. (Special thanks to Ian Lance Taylor for the
explanations.)
In the current implementation of the official standard Go compiler and

runtime, stack sizes are always 2n bytes, where n is an integer larger than
10. The minimum stack size is 2KiB.
In the process of a stack growth (shrinkage), Go runtime will create a larger
(smaller) stack memory zone to replace the old one, then the already used
part of the old stack will be copied to the new stack, which leads to the
addresses of all value parts allocated on the stack change. So after the
copying, the stack allocated pointers which are referencing stack value parts
must be all updated accordingly.
The following is an example to show the effects of stack growth and

shrinkage. We will find the address of the variable x changes after a stack
growth (caused by calling the function f ) and after a garbage collection
cycle (started manually) ends.
package main
import "runtime"
//go:noinline
func f(i int) byte {
var a [1<<13]byte // allocated on stack and make stack grow
return a[i]
}
func main(){
var x int
println(&x) // <address 1>
f(1) // (make stack grow)
runtime.GC() // (make stack shrink)
runtime.GC() // (make stack shrink)
runtime.GC() // (stack does not shrink)
}
Note that each of the first two manual runtime.GC calls causes a stack
shrinkage, but the last one doesn't.
Let's make an analysis on how the stack of the main goroutine grows and
shrinks during the execution of the program.
1. At the starting, the initial stack size is 2KiB.

2. The frame size of the f function is 8216 bytes. Before entering the f
function call, the stack grows to 16KiB, which is the smallest 2n which
is larger than the demand (10KiB or so).
3. After the f function call fully exits, the stack will not shrink
immediately, until a garbage collection cycle happens.
4. The first runtime.GC call shrinks the stack to 8KiB.
5. The second runtime.GC call shrinks the stack to 4KiB.
6. The third runtime.GC call doesn't shrink the stack, though 2KiB is
sufficient now. The reason is the current official standard runtime
implementation doesn't shrink a stack to a size which is less than 4
times of the demand.
The reason why the array a is allocated on stack will be explained in the a
later section in this chapter.
Though it happens rarely in practice, we should try to avoid making stack

grow and shrink frequently. That is, for some rare cases, allocating some
value parts on stack might be not a good idea.
There is a global limit of stack size each goroutine may reach. If a goroutine
exceeds the limit while growing its stack, the whole program crashes. As of
Go toolchain 1.22 versions, the default maximum stack size is 1 GB (not
GiB) on 64-bit systems, and 250 MB (not MiB) on 32-bit systems. Please
note that, the actual max stack size allowed by the current stack grow
implementation is about the half of the max stack size setting (512 MiB on
64-bit systems and 128 MiB on 32-bit systems).
The following is an example program which will crash for stack exceeds
limit.
package main
const N = 1024 * 1024 * 10 // 10M
func f(v [N]byte, n int) {

if n > 0 {
f(v, n-1)
}
}
func main() {
var x [N]byte
f(x, 50)
}
If the call f(x, 50) is changed to f(x, 48) , then the program will exit
without crashing (on 64-bit systems).
We can call the runtime/debug.SetMaxStack function to change the global
stack maximum limit setting. There is not a formal way to control the initial
stack size of a goroutine, though an informal way will be provided in a later
section of this chapter.
Memory wasting caused by unused stack spaces

As aforementioned, Go runtime will create a stack for each goroutine. The
size of the memory zone of a stack is often larger than the size the stack
really needs, which means there is some memory wasted on most stacks. If
the stack of a goroutine grows to a much larger size, then there will be more
memory wasted. And, a bit extra memory is needed to store goroutine
information. So the more goroutines are alive at the same time, the more
memory is wasted. Thousands of simultaneous alive goroutine might be not
a problem, millions might be, depending on how much memory is
available.
For all kinds of reasons, a value (part) will escape to

heap even if it is only used in one goroutine
The following sub-sections will introduce some such cases (not a full list of
such caes).
A local variables declared in a loop will escape to heap if it is

referenced by a value out of the loop
For example, the variable n in the following code will escape to heap. The
reason is there might be many coexisting instances of n if its containing
loop needs many steps to finish. The number of the instances is often hard
or impossible to determine at compile time, whereas the stack frame size of
a function must be determined at compile time, so the compiler lets every
instance of n escape to heap.
It is admitted that, for this specified example, the compiler could be smarter
to determine that the loop step is one and only one coexisting instance of n
is needed. The current the official standard Go compiler (version 1.22.n)
doesn't consider such special cases.
package main
func main() {
var x *int
for {
var n = 1 // moved to heap: n
x = &n
break
}
_ = x
}
The value parts referenced by an argument will escape to heap

if the argument is passed to interface method calls
For example, in the following code, the value x will be allocated on stack,
but the value y will be allocated on heap.
package main
type I interface {
M(*int)
}
type T struct{}
func (T) M(*int) {}
var t T
var i I = t
func main() {
var x int // does not escape
t.M(&x)
var y int // moved to heap: y
i.M(&y)
}
It is often impossible or too expensive for compilers to determine the

dynamic value (and therefor the concrete method) of an interface value, so
the official standard compiler gives up to do so for most cases. Potentially,
the concrete method of the interface value could pass its arguments to some
other goroutines. So, for safety, the official standard compiler
conservatively lets the value parts referenced by the arguments escape to
heap.
For some case, the compiler could determine the dynamic value (and
therefor the concrete method) of an interface value at compile time. If the
compiler finds the concrete method doesn't pass an argument to other
goroutines, then it will let the value parts referenced by the argument not
escape to heap. For example, in the following code, the value x and y are
both allocated on stack. The reason why the value y doesn't escape is the
method call i.M(&y) is de-virtualized to t.M(&y) at compile time.
package main
type I interface{
M(*int)
}
type T struct{}
func (T) M(*int) {}
func main() {
var t T
var i I = t
var x int
t.M(&x)
var y int
i.M(&y)
}
Before Go toolchain version 1.21, a reflect.ValueOf function

call makes the values referenced by its argument escape to heap
Before Go toolchain version 1.21, a call to the reflect.ValueOf function

will always make an allocation on heap (if its only argument is not an
interface) and makes the values referenced by its only argument escape to
heap. Since Go toolchain version 1.21, a call to the reflect.ValueOf
function will only make a heap allocation when necessary; consequently,
the values referenced by its only argument will not always escape to heap.
This could be proved by the following program.
// reflect-value-escape-analysis.go
package main
import "reflect"
var x reflect.Value
func main() {
var n = 100000 // line 9
_ = reflect.ValueOf(&n)
var k = 100000
_ = reflect.ValueOf(k) // line 13
var q = 100000
x = reflect.ValueOf(q) // line 16
}
The outputs by using different Go toolchain versions:
$ gotv 1.20. run -gcflags=-m reflect-value-escape-analysis.go

[Run]: $HOME/.cache/gotv/tag_go1.20.9/bin/go run -gcflags=-m
aaa.go
...
./reflect-value-escape-analysis.go:9:6: moved to heap: n
./reflect-value-escape-analysis.go:13:22: k escapes to heap
./reflect-value-escape-analysis.go:16:22: q escapes to heap
$ gotv 1.21. run -gcflags=-m reflect-value-escape-analysis.go

[Run]: $HOME/.cache/gotv/tag_go1.21.2/bin/go run -gcflags=-m
aaa.go
...
./reflect-value-escape-analysis.go:13:22: k does not escape
./reflect-value-escape-analysis.go:16:22: q escapes to heap
Please note that the message q escapes to heap actually means a copy
of q escapes to heap (similar for k in 1.20 outputs).
A call to the fmt.Print function makes the values referenced

by its arguments escape to heap
A such call will always make an allocation on heap to create a copy for
each of its argument (if that argument is not an interface) and makes the
values referenced by its arguments escape to heap.
For example, in the following code, the variable x will escape to heap, but
the variable y doesn't. And a copy of z is allocated on heap.
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
var x = 1 << 20 // moved to heap: x
fmt.Println(&x)
var y = 2 << 20 // y does not escape
println(&y)
var z = 3 << 20
fmt.Println(z) // z escapes to heap
}
The same situation happen for other fmt.Print alike functions.

The values referenced by function return results will escape
It is expensive to trace how the return results of a function are used by the
callers of the function. So the compiler lets all value parts referenced by the
results escape.
For example, in the following code, assume the function f is not inline-
able, then the value *p will escape to heap, for it is referenced by the return
result. Note, the compiler is smart enough to decide the value t , which is
referenced by the argument x passed to the f function call, could be safely
allocated on stack.
package main
//go:noinline
func f(x *int) *int {
var n = *x + 1 // moved to heap: n
return &n
}
func main() {
var t = 1 // does not escape
var p = f(&t)
println(*p) // 2
println(&t) // 0xc000034758
println(p) // 0xc0000140c0
}
Function inline might affect escape analysis results

If a function call is inlined in its caller function, then the result variables of
the inlined call become into local variables of the caller function, which will
ease escape analysis much. After the inlining, compiler might let some
value parts which originally escape to heap be allocated on stack instead.
Still use the example in the last section as an example, but remove the
//go:noinline line to make the function f inline-able, then the value *p
will be allocated on stack.
package main
func f(x *int) *int { // x does not escape

var n = *x + 1 // moved to heap: n
return &n
}
func main() {
var t = 1
var p = f(&t)
println(*p) // 2
println(&t) // 0xc000034760
println(p) // 0xc000034768
}
The printed two addresses show the distance between the value t and *p is
the size of the value size of *p , which indicates the two values are both
allocated on stack. Please note that the message "moved to heap: n" is
still there, but it is for the f function calls which are not inlined (no such
calls in this tiny program).
The following is the rewritten code (by the compiler) after inlining:
package main
func main() {
var t = 1
var s = &t
var n = *s + 1
var p = &n
println(*p)
println(&t) // 0xc000034760
println(p) // 0xc000034768
}
After the rewrite, the compiler easily knows the n variable is only used in
the current goroutine so lets it not escape.
Function inlining is not always helpful for escape analysis
Currently (Go toolchain 1.22 version), function inlining is not always

helpful for escape analysis. This is caused by some small defects in the
compiler implementation. For example, in the following code, even if the
createSlice function call is inlined, the slice returned by it is still
allocated on heap, because constants don't propagate well in the current
implementation.
// constinline.go
package main
func createSlice(n int) []byte { // line 4

return make([]byte, n) // line 5
}
func main() {
var x = createSlice(32) // line 9
var y = make([]byte, 32) // line 10
_, _ = x, y
}
Run it:
$ go run -gcflags="-m" constinline.go

./constinline.go:4:6: can inline createSlice
./constinline.go:8:6: can inline main
./constinline.go:9:21: inlining call to createSlice
./constinline.go:5:13: make([]byte, n) escapes to heap
./constinline.go:9:21: make([]byte, n) escapes to heap
./constinline.go:10:14: make([]byte, 32) does not escape
Future versions of the official standard Go compiler might make

improvements to avoid more unnecessary escapes.
Control memory block allocation places

As aforementioned, sometimes, it is not a good idea to let some very large
memory blocks allocated on stack even if these memory blocks are capable
of being allocated on stack.
On the other hand, it is generally a good idea to try to let small memory
blocks allocated on stack if it is possible.
The following will introduce some facts and tips to control memory block
allocation places.
Ensure a value is allocated on heap
For some rare scenarios, we might expect some values which are only used
in the current goroutine to be allocated on heap at run time. There are two
ways to make sure a value v will escape to heap at run time:
1. let another value allocated on heap reference the value v .

2. let two goroutines use v and at least one goroutine modifies v after
they both start.
Here, only the first way will be talked about.
The standard packages internally use a trick like the following code shows
to make some values escape for sure. The trick uses a package-level
variable sink (which is allocated on heap for sure) to reference the value
which is expected to escape. The line sink = x will be optimized away but
it will still affect the decisions made by the escape analysis module. Please
note that, a value referencing the value expected to escape should be passed
to the escape function. Generally, the passed value is a pointer to the value
expected to escape.
var sink interface{}
//go:noinline
func escape(x interface{}) {
sink = x
sink = nil
}
the following is an example which uses the trick:
package main
//go:noinline
sink = x
sink = nil
}
func main() {
var a = 1 // moved to heap: a
var b = true // moved to heap: b
escape(&a)
escape(&b)
println(a, b)
}
As the //go:noinline directive is only intended to be used in toolchain

and standard packages development, the code for the trick could be
modified as the following in user code. The official standard Go compiler
will not inline calls to a function which will potentially call itself.

if x == nil {
escape(&x) // avoid being inlined
panic("x must not nil")
}
sink = x
sink = nil
}
Surely, if we know some values will be allocated on heap, then we can just
let those values reference the values expected to escape.
Use explicit value copies to help compilers detect some values

don't escape
Let's revisit the example used previously (with a small modification, b is

initialized as true now):
package main
func main() {
var (
b = true // moved to heap: b
)
go func() {
if b {
a++
}
close(c)
}()
<-c
b = !b
}
In this example, variables a and b both escape. If we modify the example

by making copies of a and b (in two different ways) like the following,
then both a and b will not escape.
package main
func main() {
var (
a = 1 // doesn't escape
b = true // doesn't escape
c = make(chan int)
)
b1 := b
go func(a int) {
if b1 {
a++
c <- a
}
}(a)
a = <-c
b = !b
}
For this specified example, whether or not variables a and b escape has a
very small effect on overall program performance. But the tip introduced
here might be helpful elsewhere.
Memory size thresholds used by the compiler to make
allocation placement decisions
To avoid crashes caused by goroutine stacks exceed the maximum stack

size, even though the compiler makes sure that a value part is used by only
one goroutine, it will still let the value part allocated on heap if the size of
the value part is larger than a threshold. There are several such thresholds
used by the official standard Go compiler (v1.22.n):
in a conversion between string and byte slice, it the result string or

byte slice contains no more than 32 bytes, then its indirect part (its
underlying bytes) will be allocated on stack, otherwise, on heap.
However, the threshold of converting a constant string (to byte slice) is
relaxed to 64K (64 * 1024) bytes.
if the size of a type T is larger than 64K (64 * 1024) bytes, then T
values allocated by new(T) and &T{} will be allocated on heap.
if the size of the backing array [N]T of the result of the make([]T, N)
call is larger than 64K (64 * 1024) bytes, then the backing array will
be allocated on heap. Here, N is a constant so that the compile could
make decisions at compile time. If it is not a constant and larger than
zero, then the backing array will be always allocated on heap.
in a variable declaration, if the size of the direct part of the variable is
larger than 10M (10 * 1024 * 1024) bytes, then the direct part will be
allocated on heap.
The following are some examples to show the effects of these thresholds.
Example 1:
package main
import "testing"
const t = "1234567890ABCDEF" // len(t) == 16

const S = t + t + t + t + t // len(S) == 80
var bs33 = make([]byte, 33)
func f(w []byte) func() {

return func() {
_ = string(w) // string(w) does not escape
}
}
func g(v string) func() {

return func() {
_ = []byte(v) // ([]byte)(v) does not escape
}
}
func h() {
_ = []byte(S) // ([]byte)(S) does not escape
}
func main() {
stat := func( f func() ) int {
allocs := testing.AllocsPerRun(10, f)
return int(allocs)
}
println(stat(f(bs33))) // 1 (heap allocation)
println(stat(f(bs33[:32]))) // 0 (heap allocations)
println(stat(g(S[:33]))) // 1 (heap allocation)

println(stat(g(S[:32]))) // 0 (heap allocations)
println(stat(h)) // 0 (heap allocations)
}
Please note: the "XXX does not escape" analysis message means the
compiler knows that XXX is used only by one goroutine, but if the
corresponding threshold is surpassed, then XXX will be allocated on heap
(special thanks to Keith Randall for the explanations).
From the outputs of example 1, we could affirm the byte elements of the
result strings or byte slices of conversions between string and byte slice will
be always allocated on heap if the length of the result is larger than 32.
Note, however, the threshold of converting a constant string is relaxed to

64K bytes, which is why these are no escapes happening in the h function.
Example 2:
package main
import "testing"
const N = 64 * 1024 // 65536

var n byte = 123
func new65537() byte {

// new([65537]byte) escapes to heap
var a = new([N+1]byte)
for i := range a { a[i] = n }
return a[n]
}
// new([65535]byte) does not escape
var a = new([N-1]byte)
return a[n]
}
func comptr65537() byte {

// &[65537]byte{} escapes to heap
a := &[N+1]byte{}
return a[n]
}

// &[65535]byte{} does not escape
a := &[N-1]byte{}
return a[n]
}
func main() {
stat := func( f func() byte ) int {
allocs := testing.AllocsPerRun(10, func() {
f()
})
return int(allocs)
}
println(stat(new65537)) // 1 (heap allocation)
println(stat(new65535)) // 0 (heap allocations)
println(stat(comptr65537)) // 1 (heap allocation)
println(stat(comptr65535)) // 0 (heap allocations)
}
From the outputs of example 2, we could affirm that the T value created in
new(T) and &T{} will be always allocated on heap if the size of type T is
larger than 64K (65536) bytes.
(Please note that, we deliberately ignore the case of size 65536. Before Go
toolchain 1.17, T values will be allocated on heap if the size of T is 65536.
Go toolchain v1.17 changed this.)
Example 3:
package main
import "testing"
const N = 64 * 1024 // 65536

var n = 1
func makeSlice65537() bool {

// make([]bool, N + 1) escapes to heap
s := make([]bool, N+1)
for i := range s { s[i] = n>0 }
return s[len(s)-1]
}
func makeSlice65535() bool {

// make([]bool, N - 1) does not escape
s := make([]bool, N-1)
return s[len(s)-1]
}
func makeSliceVarSize() bool {

// make([]bool, n) escapes to heap
s := make([]bool, n)
return s[len(s)-1]
}
func main() {
stat := func( f func() bool) int {
f()
})
return int(allocs)
}
println(stat(makeSlice65537)) // 1 (heap allocation)
println(stat(makeSlice65535)) // 0 (heap allocations)
println(stat(makeSliceVarSize)) // 1 (heap allocation)
}
From the outputs of example 3, we could affirm that:
if N is a constant and the size of the backing array [N]T of the result of
the make([]T, N) call is larger than 64K (64 * 1024) bytes, then the
backing array will be allocated on heap.
if n is not a constant and n is larger than zero, then the backing array
will be always allocated on heap, for compilers couldn't determine the
backing array size of the result slice at compile time.
(Again, please also note that, if the constant N equals to 65536, the
elements of make([]T, N) will be allocated on heap before Go toolchain
v1.17, but will be allocated on stack since Go toolchain v1.17.)
Example 4:
package main
import "testing"
const N = 10 * 1024 * 1024 // 10M

var n = N - 1
func declare10M() byte {

var a [N]byte
for i := range a { a[i] = byte(i)}
return a[n]
}
func declare10Mplus1() byte {

var a [N+1]byte // moved to heap: a
return a[n]
}
func redeclare10M() byte {

a := [N]byte{}
return a[n]
}
func redeclare10Mplus1() byte {

a := [N+1]byte{} // moved to heap: a
return a[n]
}
func main() {
stat := func( f func() byte) int {
f()
})
return int(allocs)
}
println(stat(declare10M)) // 0
println(stat(declare10Mplus1)) // 1
println(stat(redeclare10M)) // 0
println(stat(redeclare10Mplus1)) // 1
}
From the execution result of example 4, we could affirm that, in a variable

declaration, if the size of the direct part of the variable is larger than 10M
(10 * 1024 * 1024) bytes, then the direct part will be allocated on heap.
Use smaller thresholds
Please note, the above mentioned thresholds 64K and 10M will become
much smaller (16K and 128K respectively) if the -smallframes compiler
option is specified. For example, if we use the command go run -
gcflags='-smallframes' main.go to run the following program, then all
the checked functions will make one allocation on heap.
// main.go
package main
import "testing"
const N = 16 * 1024 // 16384

const M = 128 * 1024 // 131072
var x byte = 123

// new([65535]byte) escapes to heap
var a = new([N+1]byte)
for i := range a { a[i] = x }
return a[x]
}

// &[65535]byte{} escapes to heap
a := &[N+1]byte{}
return a[x]
}
func make16384() byte {

// make([]byte, N + 1) escapes to heap
a := make([]byte, N+1)
return a[x]
}
func declare131073() byte {

var a [M+1]byte
return a[x]
}
func main() {
f()
})
return int(allocs)
}
// All print 1 if "-smallframes" is specified,

// and print 0 if "-smallframes" is unspecified,
println(stat(new16384))
println(stat(comptr16384))
println(stat(make16384))
println(stat(declare131073))
}
If we use the command go run main.go to run the program, then none of
the checked functions will make allocations on heap.
Allocate the backing array of a slice on stack even if its size is

larger than or equal to 64K (but not larger than 10M)
We have learned that the largest slice backing array which could be
allocated on stack is 65536 (or 65535 before Go toolchain v1.17). But there
is a tip to raise the limit to 10M: derive slices from a stack allocated array.
For example, the elements of the slice s created in the following program
are allocated on stack. The length of s is 10M, which is far larger than
65536.
package main
import "testing"
const N = 10 * 1024 * 1024 // 10M

var n = N/2
func f() byte {

var a [N]byte // allocated on stack
for i := range a {
a[i] = byte(i)
}
var s = a[:] // a slice with 10M elements
var p = &a
return s[n] + p[n]
}
func main() {
f()
})
return int(allocs)
}
println(stat(f)) // 0
}
As of Go toolchain 1.22 versions, this tip still works.
Allocate the backing array of a slice with an arbitrary length

on stack
It looks the escape analysis module in the current stanard Go compiler
implementation (v1.22.n) misses the case of using composite literals to
create slices. When using the composite literal way to create a slice, the
elements of the slice will be always allocated on stack (if the compiler
makes sure that the elements of the slice will be used by only one
goroutine), regardless of the length of the slice and the size of the elements.
For example, the following example program will allocate the 500M
elements of a byte slice on stack.
package main
import "testing"
const N = 500 * 1024 * 1024 // 500M

var v byte = 123
func createSlice() byte {

// []byte{...} does not escape
var s = []byte{N: 0}
for i := range s { s[i] = v }
return s[v]
}
func main() {
f()
})
return int(allocs)
}
println(stat(createSlice)) // 0 (heap allocations)
}
Future Go toolchain versions might change the implementation so that this

tip might not work later. But up to now (Go toolchain 1.22.n), this tip still
works.
More tricks to allocate arbitrary-size values on stack
There are more corner cases in which values with arbitrary sizes will be
allocated on stack. Similarly, future Go toolchain versions might (or might
not) change the implementation details so that the allocation behaviors for
these cases might change later.
All of the following [N]byte values are allocated on stack.
const N = 1024 * 1024 * 100
//go:noinline
func boxLargeSizeValue() {
var x interface{} = [N]byte{} // 1
println(x != nil)
}
//go:noinline
func largeSizeParameter(x [N]byte) { // 2
}
//go:noinline
func largeSizeElement() {
var m map[int][N]byte
m[0] = [N]byte{} // 3
}
However, as what has been mentioned in the chapter before the last, to
avoid large value copy costs, generally, we should not
box large-size values into interfaces.

use large-size types as function parameter types.
use large-size types are map key and element types.
That is why the three cases shown in the above code snippet are corner
cases. Generally, we should not write such code in practice.
Grow stack in less times

A stack growth includes two steps. The first step is to find a larger
continuous memory segment as the new stack zone. The second step is to
copy the used part on the old stack to the new one and adjust some pointer
values if necessary. Comparatively, the second step is more costly than the
first one.
Sometimes, during the execution of a goroutine, its stack will grow to a

large size eventually, in several times. If we could confidently predict that
this will happen and know the peek stack size, then we could use the trick
shown in the following code to initialize the stack size to the peek size, so
that multiple stack growths will be avoided during the execution of the
goroutine (if ).
The trick is shown in the following example.

// init-stack-size.go
package main
import "fmt"
import "time"
func demo(n int) byte {

var a [8192]byte
var b byte
if n--; n > 0 {
b = demo(n)
}
return a[n] + b
}
func foo(c chan time.Duration) {

start := time.Now()
demo(8192)
c <- time.Since(start)
}
func bar(c chan time.Duration) {

start := time.Now()
// Use a dummy anonymous function to enlarge stack.
func(x *interface{}) {
if x != nil {
*x = [1024 * 1024 * 64]byte{}
// Prevent this anonymous function being inlined.
recover()
}
}(nil)
demo(8192)
c <- time.Since(start)
}
func main() {
var c = make(chan time.Duration, 1)
go foo(c)
fmt.Println("foo:", <-c)
go bar(c)
fmt.Println("bar:", <-c)
}
Run it:
$ go run init-stack-size.go
foo: 42.051369ms
bar: 4.740523ms
From the outputs, we could get that the efficiency of the bar goroutine is
higher than the foo goroutine. The reason is simple, only one stack growth
happens in the lifetime of the bar goroutine, whereas more than 10 stack
growths happen in the lifetime of the foo goroutine.
The official standard Go compiler decides to let a [1024 * 1024 *

64]byte value allocated on the stack of the bar goroutine (in fact, this will
not happen) and calculate the frame size of the dummy anonymous function
as 67108888 bytes (larger than 64 MiB), so the invocation of the
anonymous function makes the stack of the bar goroutine grow to the peak
size (128 MiB) before calling the demo function. Assuming no garbage
collections happen during the lifetime of the goroutine, the stack doesn't
need to grow any more.
At the beginning of the goroutine lifetime, the size of the used part of the
stack is still small, so the stack copy cost is small. Along with the used part
becomes larger and larger, a stack growth will copy more and more
memory. So the sum of the stack copy costs in the foo goroutine is much
larger than the one single stack copy cost in the bar goroutine.
Garbage Collection
This chapter doesn't plan to explain the Garbage Collection (GC)
implementation made by the official standard Go runtime in detail. Only
several facts in the GC implementation will be touched.
Within a GC cycle, there is a scan+mark phase and a sweep phase.
During the scan+mark phase of a GC cycle, the garbage collector will scan
all pointers in the already-known alive value parts to find more alive value
parts (referenced by those already-known alive ones), until no more alive
value parts need to be scanned. In the process, all heap memory blocks
hosting alive value parts are marked as non-garbage memory blocks.
During the sweep phase of a GC cycle, the heap memory blocks which are
not marked as non-garbage will be viewed as garbage and collected.
So, generally speaking, the more pointers are used, the more pressure is
made for GC (for the more scan work to do).
GC pacer
At run time, a new GC cycle will start automatically when certain
conditions are reached. The current automatic GC pacer design includes the
following scheduling strategies:
When the scan+mark phase of a GC cycle is just done, Go runtime will

calculate a target heap size by using the configured GOGC percentage
value. After the GC cycle, when the size of the heap (approximately)
exceeds the target heap size later, the next GC cycle will automatically
start. This strategy (called new heap memory percentage strategy
below) will be described with more details in a later section.
A new GC cycle will also automatically start if the last GC cycle has
ended for at least two minutes. This is important for some value
finalizers to get run and some goroutine stacks get shrunk in time.
Go toolchain 1.19 introduced a new scheduling strategy: the memory
limit strategy. When the total amount of memory Go runtime uses
(approximately) surpasses the (soft) limit, a new GC cycle will start.
(Note: The above descriptions are rough. The official standard Go runtime
also considers some other factors in the GC pacer implementation, which is
why the above descriptions use the "approximately" wording.)
The three strategies may take effects at the same time.
The second strategy is an auxiliary strategy. This article will not talk more
about it. With the other two strategies in play, the more frequently memory
blocks are allocated on heap, the more frequently GC cycles start.
Please note that, the current GC pacer design is not promised to be perfect
for every use cases. It will be improved constantly in future official
standard Go compiler/runtime versions.
Automatic GC might affect Go program execution

performance
GC cycles will consume some CPU resources, so they might affect Go
program execution performance to some extend, depending on how
program code is written. Generally, if the code of a program is not written
very badly, we don't need to worry about the performance impact caused by
GC, for GC cycles only consume a small fragment of the CPU resources
consumed by the main program logic. Comparing to the conveniences
brought by automatic GC, the small performance loss is not a big deal.
However, if some code of a program is written in a bad way which makes

GC cycles busy (run frequently and scan a large quantity of pointers), then
GC might affect program execution performance seriously.
How to reduce GC pressure?

No matter how the GC pacer is (and will be) designed, the basic principles
to reduce GC pressure include:
allocate less short-lived memory blocks on heap (garbage production

speed control).
create less pointers (scan work load control).
When a local value part is allocated on heap, an implicit pointer is created

on stack to reference the local value part allocated on heap so that the value
part is traceable (from stacks). This means reducing heap allocations is
helpful to reduce pointers.
Heap memory allocations and pointer creations are inevitable in

programming. If we need, just do it. We don't need to deliberately avoid
using pointers with a lot of efforts.
In fact, pointers could be often used to reduce copy costs. So whether or not
some pointers should be used depends on specific situations. We should
only avoid using pointers in the situations where their drawbacks are
obvious.
We should try to avoid unnecessary memory allocations, especially

unnecessary heap memory allocations. However, admittedly, for many
reasons, such as language safety and API design restrictions, unnecessary
memory allocations are hard to be avoided totally. Go is not C, we should
acknowledge and accept the fact. After all, Go provides much more
conveniences than C.
Previous chapters have introduced some tips to avoid allocations. The

coming chapters will introduce more.
Memory fragments
With memory blocks being allocated and collected from time to time,
memory will become fragmented. The current official standard Go runtime
implementation manages memory in an effective way (based on tcmalloc),
so generally memory fragmenting is not a problem in Go programming.
This book doesn't provide suggestions to avoid memory fragments.
Memory wasting caused by sharing memory blocks

Sometimes, multiple value parts are carried on the same memory block
(allocated on heap). The memory block could be only collected when all
these value parts are become unused. In other words, a tiny alive value part
carried on a memory block will prevent the memory block from being
collected, even if the tiny value part only occupies a small portion of the
memory block.
Generally, such situations happen in the following cases:
several elements of a slice (or array or string) are still alive but others
become unused.
several fields of a struct value are still alive but others become unused.
a hybrid of the above two.
The following is an example which shows one such situation. In the

example, the 1000 elements of the slice s are all carried on the same
memory block.
package main
import (
"log"
"runtime"
"time"
)
func main() {
log.SetFlags(0)
var s = make([]int, 1000)

for i := range s {
s[i] = i
runtime.SetFinalizer(&s[i], func(v interface{}) {
log.Println("element", *v.(*int), "is collected")
})
}
var p = &s[999]
runtime.GC()
// log.Println(*p) // 999
_ = p
time.Sleep(time.Second)
}
Run this program, it will print:
element 999 is collected

...
The output indicates that the a new GC cycle (triggered by the manual
runtime.GC call) makes the memory block carrying the slice elements
collected, otherwise the fanalizers of these elements will not get executed.
Let's turn on the log.Println(*p) line and run the program again, then it
will merely print 999 , which indicates the memory block carrying the slice
elements is still not collected when the manual GC cycle ends. Yes, the fact
that the last element in the slice will still be used prevents the whole
memory block from being collected.
We may copy the long-lived tiny value part (so that it will be carried on a
small memory block) to let the old larger memory block collected. For
example, we may replace the following line in the above program (with the
log.Println(*p) line turned on):
var p = &a[999]
with
var v = a[999] // make a copy

var p = &v
, then the manual GC will make the memory block carrying the slice
elements collected.
The return results of some functions in the standard strings (or bytes )
packages are substrings (or subslices) of some arguments passed to these
functions. Such functions include Fields , Split and Trim functions.
Similarly, we should duplicate such a result substring (or subslice) if it is
long lived but its length is small, and the corresponding argument is short
lived but has a large length; otherwise, the memory block carrying the
underlying bytes of (the result and the argument) will not get collected in
time.
Try to generate less short-lived memory blocks to

lower automatic GC frequency
In practice, most garbage comes from short-lived temporary value parts.
Such short-lived value parts are often allocated in the following scenarios:
string concatenations. Many concatenated result strings are passed as

arguments of some function calls, then they will be discarded
immediately. For some cases, to produce the final argument strings,
many intermediate temporary strings are created.
conversions between string and byte slice. The conversion results will
be used then discarded soon. For safety, such a conversion needs to
duplicate the underlying bytes. A memory block allocation is often
needed for the duplication.
box non-interface values into interfaces. The interfaces will be used
then discarded soon. Most value boxing operations need one
allocation.
There are also some other scenarios in which short-lived value parts will be
generated.
In programming, we should try to generate less short-lived value parts to

lower automatic GC frequency.
Use new heap memory percentage strategy to

control automatic GC frequency
The value parts which contain pointers and are known clearly alive by Go
runtime are called (scannable) root value parts (call roots below). Roots
mainly come from the value parts allocated on stack and the direct parts of
global (package-level) variables. To simplify the implementation, the
official Go runtime views all the value parts allocated on stack as roots,
including the value parts which don't contain pointers.
The memory blocks hosting roots are called root memory blocks. For the
official standard Go runtime, before version 1.18, roots have no impact on
the new heap memory percentage strategy; since version 1.18, they have.
The new heap memory percentage strategy is configured through a GOGC

value, which may be set via the GOGC environment variable or modified by
calling the runtime/debug.SetGCPercent function. The default value of
the GOGC value is 100 .
We may set the GOGC environment variable as off or call the

runtime/debug.SetGCPercent function with a negative argument to
disable the new heap memory percentage strategy. Note: doing these will
also disable the two-minute auto GC strategy. To disable the new heap
memory percentage strategy solely, we may set the GOGC value as
math.MaxInt64 .
If the new heap memory percentage strategy is enabled (the GOGC value is
non-negative), when the scan+mark phase of a GC cycle is just done, the
official standard Go runtime (version 1.18+) will calculate the target heap
size for the next garbage collection cycle, from the non-garbage heap
memory total size (call live heap here) and the root memory block total size
(called GC roots here), according to the following formula:
Target heap size = Live heap + (Live heap + GC roots) * GOGC /

100
For versions before 1.18, the formula is:
Target heap size = Live heap + (Live heap) * GOGC / 100
When heap memory total size (approximately) exceeds the calculated target
heap size, the next GC cycle will start automatically.
Note: the minimum target heap size is (GOGC * 4 / 100)MB , which is also
the target heap size for the first GC cycle.
We could use the gctrace=1 GODEBUG environment variable option to

output a summary log line for each GC cycle. Each GC cycle summary log
line is formatted like the following text (in which each # presents a number
and ... means ignored messages by the current article).
gc # @#s #%: ..., #->#-># MB, # MB goal，# MB stacks，# MB

globals，...
The meaning of each field:
gc # the GC number, incremented at each GC

@#s elapsed time in seconds since program start
#% percentage of time spent in GC since program start
#->#-># MB heap sizes at GC start, scan end, and sweep end
# MB goal target heap size
# MB stacks estimated scannable stack size
# MB globals scannable global size
Note: in the following outputs of examples, to keep the each output line
short, not all of these fields will be shown.
Let's use an unreal program as an example to show how to use this option.
// gctrace.go
package main
import (
"math/rand"
"time"
)
var x [512][]*int
func garbageProducer() {
rand.Seed(time.Now().UnixNano())
for i := 0; ; i++ {
n := 6 + rand.Intn(6)
for j := range x {
x[j] = make([]*int, 1<<n)
for k := range x[j] {
x[j][k] = new(int)
}
}
time.Sleep(time.Second / 1000)
}
}
func main() {
garbageProducer() // never exit
}
Run it with the gctrace=1 GODEBUG environment variable option
(several unrelated starting lines are omitted in the outputs).
$ GODEBUG=gctrace=1 go run gctrace.go

...
gc 1 @0.017s 8%: ..., 3->4->4 MB, 4 MB goal, ...
gc 2 @0.037s 8%: ..., 7->8->4 MB, 8 MB goal, ...
gc 3 @0.064s 13%: ..., 8->9->4 MB, 9 MB goal, ...
gc 4 @0.108s 10%: ..., 9->9->0 MB, 10 MB goal, ...
gc 5 @0.127s 10%: ..., 3->4->3 MB, 4 MB goal, ...
gc 6 @0.155s 10%: ..., 6->7->2 MB, 8 MB goal, ...
gc 7 @0.175s 10%: ..., 5->5->4 MB, 5 MB goal, ...
gc 8 @0.206s 10%: ..., 8->8->3 MB, 9 MB goal, ...
gc 9 @0.232s 10%: ..., 5->6->4 MB, 6 MB goal, ...
gc 10 @0.269s 12%: ..., 8->10->10 MB, 9 MB goal, ...
...
(On Windows, the DOS command should be set "GODEBUG=gctrace=1" &

"go run gctrace.go" .)
Here, the #->#-># MB and # MB goal fields are what we have most
interests in. In a #->#-># MB field,
the last number is non-garbage heap memory total size (a.k.a. live
heap).
the first number is the heap size at a GC cycle start, which should be
approximately equal to the target heap size (the number in the # MB
goal field of the same line).
From the outputs, we could find that

the live heap sizes stagger much (yes, the above program is
deliberately designed as such), so the GC cycle intervals also stagger
much.
the GC cycle frequency is so high that the percentage of time spent on
GC is too high. The above outputs show the percentage varies from
8% to 12%.
The reason of the findings is that the live heap size is small (staying roughly
under 5MiB) and staggers much, but the root memory block total size is
almost zero.
One way to reduce the time spent on GC is to increase the GOGC value:
$ GOGC=1000 GODEBUG=gctrace=1 go run gctrace.go

...
gc 1 @0.074s 2%: ..., 38->43->15 MB, 40 MB goal, ...
gc 2 @0.810s 1%: ..., 160->163->9 MB, 167 MB goal, ...
gc 3 @1.285s 1%: ..., 105->107->11 MB, 109 MB goal, ...
gc 4 @1.835s 1%: ..., 125->128->10 MB, 129 MB goal, ...
gc 5 @2.331s 1%: ..., 114->117->18 MB, 118 MB goal, ...
gc 6 @3.250s 1%: ..., 199->201->8 MB, 204 MB goal, ...
gc 7 @3.703s 1%: ..., 96->98->18 MB, 100 MB goal, ...
gc 8 @4.580s 1%: ..., 201->204->10 MB, 207 MB goal, ...
gc 9 @5.111s 1%: ..., 118->119->3 MB, 122 MB goal, ...
gc 10 @5.306s 1%: ..., 43->43->4 MB, 44 MB goal, ....
...
(On Windows, the DOS command should be set "GOGC=1000" & set
"GODEBUG=gctrace=1" & "go run gctrace.go" .)
From the above outputs, we could find that, after increase the GOGC value to
1000, GC cycle intervals and the heap sizes at GC cycle beginning both
become much larger now. But GC cycle intervals and live heap sizes still
stagger much, which might be a problem for some programs. The following
sections will introduce some ways to solve the problems.
Since Go toolchain 1.18, the larger GC roots, the

larger GC cycle intervals
The following program will create a goroutine with a 150MiB real size at
run time. The size of the stack memory segment is 256MiB.
// bigstacks.go
package main
import (
"math/rand"
"time"
)
var x [512][]*int
for i := 0; ; i++ {
for j := range x {
x[j][k] = new(int)
}
}
}
}
func bigStack(c chan int, v byte) byte {

defer func() {
c <- 1
}()
var s = []byte{150 << 20: 0} // on stack
for i := range s { s[i] = v }
return s[v]
}
func main() {
go bigStack(nil, 123)
}
Run it, get the following outputs:
$ go version
$ GODEBUG=gctrace=1 go run bigstacks.go

...
gc 1 @0.008s 23%: ..., 3->3->3 MB, 4 MB goal, 150 MB stacks,
...
gc 2 @0.691s 5%: ..., 153->157->16 MB, 156 MB goal, 150 MB
stacks, ...
gc 3 @1.318s 3%: ..., 179->180->7 MB, 183 MB goal, 150 MB
stacks, ...
gc 4 @2.040s 2%: ..., 159->160->3 MB, 164 MB goal, 150 MB
stacks, ...
gc 5 @2.568s 1%: ..., 152->155->16 MB, 156 MB goal, 150 MB
stacks, ...
gc 6 @3.365s 1%: ..., 178->181->18 MB, 182 MB goal, 150 MB
stacks, ...
gc 7 @4.189s 1%: ..., 180->181->6 MB, 187 MB goal, 150 MB
stacks, ...
gc 8 @4.798s 1%: ..., 158->159->9 MB, 163 MB goal, 150 MB
stacks, ...
gc 9 @5.296s 1%: ..., 165->169->13 MB, 169 MB goal, 150 MB
stacks, ...
gc 10 @5.867s 1%: ..., 172->173->4 MB, 176 MB goal, 150 MB
stacks, ...
...
The outputs show that GC cycle intervals become larger and much less
staggering (with Go toolchain version 1.18+).
In calculating the root memory block total size, the official standard runtime
version 1.18 uses stack memory segment sizes, whereas version 1.19+ use
the real sizes of stacks (however, the numbers shown in the # MB stacks
elements are still stack memory segment sizes in 1.19 outputs). So, when
using Go toolchain 1.18 to run the above example program, the target heap
sizes will be some larger:
$ go version
$ GODEBUG=gctrace=1 go run bigstacks.go

...
gc 1 @0.015s ..., 4 MB goal, 256 MB stacks, ...
...
The following program uses a huge-size package-level variable which

contains a pointer, so that the root memory block total size of the program is
also huge.
// bigglobals.go
package main
import (
"math/rand"
"time"
)
var x [512][]*int
for i := 0; ; i++ {
for j := range x {
x[j][k] = new(int)
}
}
}
}
var bigGlobal struct {

p *int
_ [150 << 20]byte
}
func main() {
println(bigGlobal.p) // unreachable
}
Run it, get the following outputs:
$ GODEBUG=gctrace=1 go run bigglobals.go

...
gc 1 @0.266s 0%: ..., 150 MB goal, ..., 150 MB globals, ...
...
The same, the outputs show that GC cycle intervals become larger and
much less staggering (with Go toolchain version 1.18+).
The examples in the current section show that root memory blocks
objectively act as memory ballasts.
The next section will introduce a memory ballast trick which works with
Go toolchain version 1.18-.
Use memory ballasts to avoid frequent GC cycles

The article Go memory ballast introduces a trick to control GC cycles in a
much less staggering pace. The trick is like:
import "runtime"
func main() {
// ballastSize is value much larger than the
// maximum possible live heap size of the program.
ballast := make([]byte, ballastSize)
programRun()
runtime.KeepAlive(&ballast)
}
The trick allocate a slice with a big element sum size. The size contributes
to non-garbage heap size.
Let's modify the gctrace example shown above as:
// gcballast.go
package main
import (
"math/rand"
"runtime"
"time"
)
var x [512][]*int
for i := 0; ; i++ {
for j := range x {
x[j][k] = new(int)
}
}
}
}
func main() {
const ballastSize = 150 << 20 // 150 MiB
ballast := make([]byte, ballastSize)
garbageProducer()
runtime.KeepAlive(&ballast)
}
This program uses a 150MiB memory ballast, so that the non-garbage heap
size (live heap) of the program keeps at about 150-160MiB. Consequently,
the target heap size of the program keeps at a bit over 300MiB (assume the
GOGC value is 100 ). This makes GC cycle intervals become larger and much
less staggering.
Run it to verify the effect:
$ GODEBUG=gctrace=1 go run gcballast.go

...
gc 1 @0.005s 0%: ..., 150->150->150 MB, 4 MB goal, ...
gc 2 @0.333s 5%: ..., 255->261->171 MB, 300 MB goal, ...
gc 3 @0.989s 2%: ..., 293->296->161 MB, 344 MB goal, ...
gc 4 @1.554s 1%: ..., 276->276->152 MB, 324 MB goal, ...
gc 5 @2.065s 1%: ..., 260->261->159 MB, 305 MB goal, ...
gc 6 @2.595s 1%: ..., 271->271->152 MB, 318 MB goal, ...
gc 7 @3.082s 1%: ..., 259->267->173 MB, 305 MB goal, ...
gc 8 @3.708s 1%: ..., 295->296->155 MB, 347 MB goal, ...
gc 9 @4.214s 1%: ..., 265->266->153 MB, 311 MB goal, ...
gc 10 @4.731s 1%: ..., 262->262->156 MB, 307 MB goal, ...
...
Note: the elements of the local slice is never used, so the allocated memory
block for the elements is only allocated virtually, not physically (at least on
Linux). This means the elements of the slice don't consume physical
memory, which is an advantage over using root memory blocks as memory
ballasts.
Use Go toolchain 1.19 introduced memory limit
strategy to avoid frequent GC cycles
Go official standard compiler 1.19 introduced a new scheduling strategy:
the memory limit strategy. The strategy may be configured either via the
GOMEMLIMIT environment variable or through the
runtime/debug.SetMemoryLimit function. This memory limit sets a
maximum on the total amount of memory that the Go runtime should use.
In other words, if the total amount of memory Go runtime uses
(approximately) surpasses the limit, a new garbage collection process will
start. The limit is soft, a Go program will not exit when this limit is
exceeded. The default value of the memory limit is math.MaxInt64 , which
effectively disables this strategy.
The value of the GOMEMLIMIT environment variable may have an optional

unit suffix. The supported suffixes include B, KiB, MiB, GiB, and TiB. A
value without a unit means B (bytes).
The memory limit strategy and the new heap memory percentage strategy
may take effect together. For demonstration purpose, let's disable the new
heap memory percentage strategy and enable the memory limit strategy to
run the gctrace example program shown above again. Please make sure to
run the program with Go toolchain v1.19+; otherwise, the GOMEMLIMIT
environment variable will not get recognized so that automatic garbage
collection will be turned off totally.
$ go version
go version go1.19 linux/amd64
$ GOMEMLIMIT=175MiB GOGC=off GODEBUG=gctrace=1 go run
gctrace.go
gc 1 @0.283s 1%: ..., 153->155->18 MB, 157 MB goal, ...
gc 2 @0.784s 1%: ..., 151->152->6 MB, 155 MB goal, ...
gc 3 @1.445s 1%: ..., 149->151->7 MB, 152 MB goal, ...
gc 4 @2.113s 1%: ..., 148->150->8 MB, 152 MB goal, ...
gc 5 @2.765s 1%: ..., 148->150->18 MB, 152 MB goal, ...
gc 6 @3.394s 1%: ..., 147->150->18 MB, 152 MB goal, ...
gc 7 @4.006s 1%: ..., 147->151->19 MB, 152 MB goal, ...
gc 8 @4.653s 1%: ..., 147->147->1 MB, 152 MB goal, ...
gc 9 @5.326s 1%: ..., 148->152->14 MB, 152 MB goal, ...
gc 10 @6.007s 1%: ..., 148->149->9 MB, 152 MB goal, ...
...
From the outputs, we could find that, the memory limit strategy can also
make GC cycle intervals become much larger and less staggering.
One goal of the memory limit strategy to provide an official way to replace
the memory ballast trick. For some Go programs, if the memory limit
values are set properly, the goal will be achieved. However, sometimes, it
might be difficult to choose a proper value for the limit. If the value is set
smaller than the amount memory of the Go program really needs, then GC
cycles will start frequently. This is a disadvantage compared to the memory
ballast solutions shown above. Please read the suggestions for using the
memory limit strategy (that containing article is an excellent article to
understand garbage collection in Go).
Pointers
Avoid unnecessary nil array pointer checks in a
loop
There are some flaws in the current official standard Go compiler
implementation (v1.22.n). One of them is some nil array pointer checks are
not moved out of loops. Here is an example to show this flaw.
// unnecessary-checks.go
package pointers
import "testing"
const N = 1000
var a [N]int
//go:noinline
func g0(a *[N]int) {
for i := range a {
a[i] = i // line 12
}
}
//go:noinline
func g1(a *[N]int) {
_ = *a // line 18
for i := range a {
a[i] = i // line 20
}
}
func Benchmark_g0(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { g0(&a) }
}
func Benchmark_g1(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { g1(&a) }
}
Let's run the benchmarks with the -S compiler option, the following
outputs are got (uninterested texts are omitted):
$ go test -bench=. -gcflags=-S unnecessary-checks.go

...
0x0004 00004 (unnecessary-checks.go:12) TESTB AL, (AX)
0x0006 00006 (unnecessary-checks.go:12) MOVQ CX, (AX)(CX*8)
...
0x0000 00000 (unnecessary-checks.go:18) TESTB AL, (AX)
0x0002 00002 (unnecessary-checks.go:18) XORL CX, CX
0x0004 00004 (unnecessary-checks.go:19) JMP 13
0x0006 00006 (unnecessary-checks.go:20) MOVQ CX, (AX)(CX*8)
...
Benchmark_g0-4 494.8 ns/op
Benchmark_g1-4 399.3 ns/op
From the outputs, we could find that the g1 implementation is more

performant than the g0 implementation, even if the g1 implementation
contains one more code line (line 18). Why? The question is answered by
the outputted assembly instructions.
In the g0 implementation, the TESTB instruction is generated within the

loop, whereas in the g1 implementation, the TESTB instruction is generated
out of the loop. The TESTB instruction is used to check whether or not the
argument a is a nil pointer. For this specified case, checking once is
enough. The one more code line avoids the flaw in the compiler
implementation.
There is a third implementation which is as performant as the g1

implementation. The third implementation uses a slice derived from the
array pointer argument.
//go:noinline
func g2(x *[N]int) {
a := x[:]
for i := range a {
a[i] = i
}
}
Please note that the flaw might be fixed in future compiler versions.
And please note that, if the three implementation functions are inline-able,
the benchmark results will change much. That is the reason why the
//go:noinline compiler directives are used here. (Before Go toolchain
v1.18, the //go:noinline compiler directives are actually unnecessary
here. Because Go toolchain v1.18- never inlines a function containing a
for-range loop.)
The case in which an array pointer is a struct field
For the cases in which an array pointer is a struct field, things are a little
complex. The _ = *t.a line in the following code is useless to avoid the
compiler flaw. For example, in the following code, the performance
difference between the f1 function and the f0 function is small. (In fact,
the f1 function might be even slower, if a NOP instruction is generated
within its loop.)
type T struct {
a *[N]int
}
//go:noinline
func f0(t *T) {
for i := range t.a {
t.a[i] = i
}
}
//go:noinline
func f1(t *T) {
_ = *t.a
for i := range t.a {
t.a[i] = i
}
}
To move the nil array pointer checks out of the loop, we should copy the
t.a field to a local variable, then adopt the trick introduced above:
//go:noinline
func f3(t *T) {
a := t.a
_ = *a
for i := range a {
a[i] = i
}
}
Or simply derive a slice from the array pointer field:
//go:noinline
func f4(t *T) {
a := t.a[:]
for i := range a {
a[i] = i
}
}
Benchmark_f0-4 622.9 ns/op

The results verify our previous conclusions.
Note, the f2 function mentioned in the benchmark results is declared as
//go:noinline
func f2(t *T) {
a := t.a
for i := range a {
a[i] = i
}
}
The f2 implementation is not fast as the f3 and f4 implementations, but it
is faster than the f0 and f1 implementations. However, that is another
story.
If the elements of an array pointer field are not modified (only read) in the
loop, then the f1 way is as performant as the f3 and f4 way.
Personally, for most cases, I think we should try to use the slice way (the f4
way) to get the best performance, because generally slices are optimized
better than arrays by the official standard Go compiler.
Avoid unnecessary pointer dereferences in a loop

Sometimes, the current official standard Go compiler (v1.22.n) is not smart
enough to generate assembly instructions in the most optimized way. We
have to write the code in another way to get the best performance. For
example, in the following code, the f function is much less performant than
the g function.
// avoid-indirects_test.go
package pointers
import "testing"
//go:noinline
func f(sum *int, s []int) {
for _, v := range s { // line 8
*sum += v // line 9
}
}
//go:noinline
func g(sum *int, s []int) {
var n = *sum
for _, v := range s { // line 16
n += v // line 17
}
*sum = n
}

var r int
func Benchmark_f(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
f(&r, s)
}
}
func Benchmark_g(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
g(&r, s)
}
}
The benchmark results (uninterested texts are omitted):
$ go test -bench=. -gcflags=-S avoid-indirects_test.go

...
0x0009 00009 (avoid-indirects_test.go:9) MOVQ (AX), SI
0x000c 00012 (avoid-indirects_test.go:9) ADDQ (BX)(DX*8),
SI
0x0010 00016 (avoid-indirects_test.go:9) MOVQ SI, (AX)
0x0013 00019 (avoid-indirects_test.go:8) INCQ DX
0x0016 00022 (avoid-indirects_test.go:8) CMPQ CX, DX
0x0019 00025 (avoid-indirects_test.go:8) JGT 9
...
0x000b 00011 (avoid-indirects_test.go:16) MOVQ (BX)(DX*8),
DI
0x000f 00015 (avoid-indirects_test.go:16) INCQ DX
0x0012 00018 (avoid-indirects_test.go:17) ADDQ DI, SI
0x0015 00021 (avoid-indirects_test.go:16) CMPQ CX, DX
0x0018 00024 (avoid-indirects_test.go:16) JGT 11
...
Benchmark_f-4 3024 ns/op
Benchmark_g-4 566.6 ns/op
The outputted assembly instructions show the pointer sum is dereferenced

within the loop in the f function. A dereference operation is a memory
operation. For the g function, the dereference operations happen out of the
loop, and the instructions generated for the loop only process registers. It is
much faster to let CPU instructions process registers than process memory,
which is why the g function is much more performant than the f function.
This is not a compiler flaw. In fact, the f and g functions are not equivalent
(though for most use cases in practice, their results are the same). For
example, if they are called like the following code shows, then they return
different results (thanks to skeeto@reddit for making this correction).
{
var s = []int{1, 1, 1}
var sum = &s[2]
f(sum, s)
println(*sum) // 6
}
{
var s = []int{1, 1, 1}
var sum = &s[2]
g(sum, s)
println(*sum) // 4
}
Another performant implementation for this specified case is to move the

pointer parameter out of the function body (again, it is not totally equivalent
to either f or g function):
//go:noinline
func h(s []int) int {
var n = 0
n += v
}
return n
}
func use_h(s []int) {

var sum = new(int)
*sum += h(s)
...
}
Structs
Avoid accessing fields of a struct in a loop though
pointers to the struct
It is much faster to let CPU instructions process registers than process
memory. So, to let the compiler generate less memory-processing assembly
instructions for a loop, we should avoid accessing fields of a struct though
pointers to the struct in the loop.
For example, in the following code, the function g is much performant than
the function f .
package structs
import "testing"
const N = 1000
type T struct {
x int
}
//go:noinline
func f(t *T) {
t.x = 0
for i := 0; i < N; i++ {
t.x += i
}
}
//go:noinline
func g(t *T) {
var x = 0
for i := 0; i < N; i++ {
x += i
}
t.x = x
}
var t = &T{}

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
f(t)
}
}

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
g(t)
}
}

The function g uses a local variable x to store the sum value and assigns
the sum value to the struct field in the end. The official standard Go
compiler is smart enough to only generate register-processing assembly
instructions for the loop of the function g .
The function f is actually equivalent to the function h declared below.
//go:noinline
func h(t *T) {
x := &t.x
for i := 0; i < N; i++ {
*x += i
}
}
So the suggestion introduced here is actually equivalent to the one

introduced in the last chapter (avoid unnecessary pointer dereferences in a
loop).
Small-size structs are optimized specially

This has been talked about in value copy costs and small-size types/values.
Make struct size smaller by adjusting field orders

Struct field orders might affect struct sizes, which has been mentioned in a
previous chapter.
Arrays and Slices
Avoid using literals of large-size array types as
comparison operands
For example, in the following code, the function CompareWithGlobalVar is
more performant than the function CompareWithLiteral (for the official
standard Go compiler v1.22.n).
package arrays
import "testing"
type T [1000]byte
var zero = T{}
func CompareWithLiteral(t *T) bool {

return *t == T{}
}
func CompareWithGlobalVar(t *T) bool {

return *t == zero
}
var x T
var r bool
func Benchmark_CompareWithLiteral(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = CompareWithLiteral(&x)
}
}
func Benchmark_CompareWithGlobalVar(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = CompareWithGlobalVar(&x)
}
}
Benchmark_CompareWithLiteral-4 21214032 52.18 ns/op

Benchmark_CompareWithGlobalVar-4 36417091 31.03 ns/op
By using the -S compiler option, we could find that the compile generates
less instructions for the function CompareWithGlobalVar than the function
CompareWithLiteral . That is why the function CompareWithGlobalVar is
more performant.
For small-size arrays, the performance difference between the two functions
is small.
Please note that future compiler versions might be improved to remove the
performance difference between the two functions.
The built-in make and append function

implementations
Go is not C, so generally, the slice elements allocated by a make call will be
all zeroed in the make call.
Since Go toolchain v1.15, the official standard Go compiler makes a special
optimization: in the following alike code, the elements within y[:m] , where
m is the return result of the copy call, will not be zeros in the make call, for
they will be overwritten by the subsequent copy call.
y = make([]T, n)
copy(y, x) // assume the return value is m
The optimization is often used to clone slices:
y = make([]T, len(x))
copy(y, x)
Up to now (Go toolchain v1.22.n), the optimization has not be implemented

perfectly yet. In the following code, the elements within s[len(x):] will
still get zeroed in the make call, which is actually unnecessarily.
s = make([]T, len(x) + len(y))

copy(s, x)
copy(s[len(x):], y)
Another imperfection of this optimization is that several requirements must

be satisfied to make it work:
the cloned slice must present as a pure or qualified identifier.

the make call must only take two arguments.
the copy call must not present as an expression in another statement.
In other words, the optimization only works for the first case in the
following code:
var s = make{[]T, 10000)
// case 1:
y = make([]T, len(s)) // works
copy(y, s)
// case 2:
y = make([]T, len(s)) // not work
_ = copy(y, s)
// case 3:
y = make([]T, len(s)) // not work
f(copy(y, s))
// case 4:
y = make([]T, len(s), len(s)) // not work
copy(y, s)
// case 5:
var a = [1][]T{s}
y = make([]T, len(a[0])) // not work
copy(y, a[0])
// case 6:
type SS struct {x []T}
var ss = SS{x: s}
y = make([]T, len(ss.x)) // not work
copy(y, ss.x)
The capacity of the result of a make call is exactly the argument passed to
the make call. For example, cap(make([]T, n) == n and cap(make([]T,
n, m) == m . This means there might be some bytes are wasted in the
memory block hosting the elements of the result.
If an append call needs to allocate, then the capacity of the result slice of
the append call is unspecified. The capacity is often larger than length of
the result slice. Assume the result of the append call is assigned to a slice
s, then the elements within s[len(s):cap(s)] will get zeroed in the
append call. The other elements will be overwritten by the elements of the
argument slices. For example, in the following code, the elements within
s[len(x)+len(y):] will get zeroed in the append call.
s = append(x, y...)
If the append call in the new = append(old, values...) statement

allocates, then the capacity of the result slice new is determined by the
following shown algorithm (assume elementSize is not zero) in Go 1.17:
var newcap int

var required = old.len + values.len
if required > old.cap * 2 {
newcap = required
} else {
if old.cap < 1024 {
newcap = old.cap * 2
} else {
newcap = old.cap
for 0 < newcap && newcap < required {
newcap += newcap / 4
}
// Avoid overflowing.
if newcap <= 0 {
newcap = required
}
}
}
var memsize = newcap * elementSize
... // Adjust memsize upwards to a nearby memory block class

size.
newcap = memsize / elementSize
The v1.17 algorithm has a drawback: the capacity of the result slice doesn't
increase monotonically with the length of the first parameter of the append
function. An example:
package main
func main() {
x1 := make([]int, 897)
x2 := make([]int, 1024)
y := make([]int, 100)
println(cap(append(x1, y...)))
println(cap(append(x2, y...)))
}
With Go toolchain v1.17, the above example prints:
2048
1280
With Go toolchain v1.18+, the above example prints:

1360
1536
That is because Go 1.18 removes this drawback by tweaking the algorithm

a bit:
var newcap int

var required = old.len + values.len
if required > old.cap * 2 {
newcap = required
} else {
const threshold = 256
if old.cap < threshold {
newcap = old.cap * 2
} else {
newcap = old.cap
for 0 < newcap && newcap < required {
newcap += (newcap + 3*threshold) / 4
}
// Avoid overflowing.
if newcap <= 0 {
newcap = required
}
}
}
The new algorithm in Go 1.18+ often allocates less memory than the old
one in Go 1.17.
Please note, each slice growth needs one memory allocation. So we should
try to grow slices with less times in programming.
Another subtle difference (up to Go toolchain 1.22) between the copy and
append functions is that the copy function will not copy elements when it
detects that the addresses of the first elements of its two slice parameters are
identical, yet the append function never performs such detections. This
means, in the following code, the copy call is much more efficient than the
append call.
var x = make([]T, 10000)

copy(x, x)
_ = append(x[:0], x...)
A concrete example showing this difference in practice is, in the two

DeleteSliceElements functions shown below, when i == j , the
implementation using copy is much more performant than the
implementation using append .
func DeleteSliceElements(s []T, i, j int) []T {

_ = s[i:j] // bounds check
return append(s[:i], s[j:]...)
}
func DeleteSliceElements(s []T, i, j int) []T {

_ = s[i:j] // bounds check
return s[:i + copy(s[i:], s[j:])]
}
Try to clip the first argument of an append call if we

know the call will allocate
If an append call allocates and there are no more elements to be appended
to the result slice, then it is best to clip the first argument of the append
call, to try to save some memory (and consume less CPU resources).
An example:
package main
func main() {
x := make([]byte, 100, 500)
y := make([]byte, 500)
a := append(x, y...)
b := append(x[:len(x):len(x)], y...)
println(cap(a)) // 1024
println(cap(b)) // 640
}
The outputs shown as comments are for Go 1.17. For Go 1.18, instead, the
above program prints:
896
640
Surely, if we confidently know that the free capacity of the first argument
slice of an append call is enough to hold all appended elements, then we
should not clip the first argument.
Grow slices (enlarge slice capacities)

There are two ways to grow the capacity of a slice x to c if the backing
array of the slice is needed to be re-allocated in the growth.
// way 1
func Grow_MakeCopy(x []T, c int) []T {
r := make([]T, c)
copy(r, x)
return r[:len(x)]
}
// way 2
func Grow_Oneline(x []T, c int) []T {
return append(x, make([]T, c - len(x))...)[:len(x)]
}
Both of the two ways are specially optimized by the official standard Go
compiler. As mentioned above, the make call in way 1 doesn't reset
elements within r[:len(x)] . In way 2, the make call doesn't make
allocations at all.
In theory, with the two optimizations, the two ways have comparable
performance. But benchmark results often show way 1 is a little more
performant.
Note that, before the official standard Go compiler implementation v1.20,

the optimization for way 2 doesn't work if the type of the first argument
slice of the append call is a named type. For example, the following
Grow_Oneline_Named function is much slower than the above
Grow_Oneline function.
type S []T
func Grow_Oneline_Named(x []T, c int) []T {

return append(x, make(S, c - len(x))...)[:len(x)]
}
This flaw has been fixed since Go toolchain v1.20.
Try to grow a slice in one step

As mentioned above, how slices grow in append calls is implementation
specific, which means the result capacity of a slice growth is unspecified by
Go specification.
If we could predict the max length of a slice at coding time, we should

allocate the slice with the max length as its capacity, to avoid some possible
future allocations caused by more slice growths.
If a slice is short-lived, then we could allocate it with an estimated large

enough capacity. There might be some memory wasted temporarily, but the
element memory will be released soon. Even if the estimated capacity is
proved to be not large enough, there might still be several allocations saved.
Clone slices
Since Go toolchain version 1.15, the most efficient way to clone a slice is
the make+copy way:
sCloned = make([]T, len(s))

copy(sCloned, s)
For many cases, the make+copy way is a little faster than the following
append way, because as mentioned above, an append call might allocate
and zero some extra elements.
sCloned = append([]T(nil), s...)
For example, in the following code, 8191 extra elements are allocated and
zeroed.
x := make([]byte, 1<<15+1)
y := append([]byte(nil), x...)
println(cap(y) - len(x)) // 8191
Merge two slices

There is not a universally perfect way to merge two slices into a new slice
with the current official standard Go compiler (up to Go toolchain v1.22.n).
If the element orders of the merged slice are important, we could use the
following two ways to merge the slice x and y (assume the length of y is
not zero).
// The make+copy way

merged = make([]T, len(x) + len(y))
copy(merged, x)
copy(merged[len(x):], y...)
// The append way

merged = append(x[:len(x):len(x)], y...)
The append way is clean but it is often a little slower, because the append
function often allocates and zeroes some extra elements. But if the length of
y is much larger than the length of x , then the append way is probably
faster, because the elements within merged[len(x):] are (unnecessarily)
zeroed in the make+copy way (then overridden by the elements of y ). So,
which way is more performant depends on specific situations.
If the element orders of the merged slice are not important and the append
way is chosen, then try to pass the shorter slice as the first argument, so that
some memory might be saved. An example to show the fact:
package main
func main() {
x := make([]int, 98)
y := make([]int, 666)
a := append(x, y...)
b := append(y, x...)
println(cap(a)) // 768
println(cap(b)) // 1360
}
The outputs shown as comments are for Go 1.17. For Go 1.18, instead, the
above program prints:
768
1024
If the free element slots in slice x are enough to hold all elements of slice y
and it is allowed to let the result slice and x share elements, then
append(x, y...) is the most performant way, for it doesn't allocate.
Merge more than two slices (into a new slice)

Up to now, there is not an extreme performant way to merge 2+ slices into a
new slice in Go. The reason is there will be always some elements
(unnecessarily) get zeroed during creating the new slice.
Since Go 1.22, the Concat function in the slices standard package exactly
does the job.
Insert a slice into another one

In theory, between the following two implementations of inserting one slice
into another one, the Insert2 implementation is always more performant
than the Insert1 implementation, because the Insert2 implementation
makes use of the make+copy optimization mentioned above, so that the
elements within s2[:k] is not zeroed within the make call.
However, for a runtime implementation imperfection (in Go

1.15/1.16/1.17), if the length of the result slice is not larger than 32768, then
the Insert2 implementation might be actually slower. This imperfection
has been fixed since Go 1.18.
func Insert1(s []byte, k int, vs []byte) []byte {

s2 := make([]byte, len(s) + len(vs))
copy(s2, s[:k])
copy(s2[k:], vs)
copy(s2[k+len(vs):], s[k:])
return s2
}
func Insert2(s []byte, k int, vs []byte) []byte {

a := s[:k]
s2 := make([]byte, len(s) + len(vs))
copy(s2, a)
copy(s2[len(a):], vs)
copy(s2[len(a)+len(vs):], s[k:])
return s2
}
The one-line trick to insert a slice, append(x1[:k:k], append(vs,

x1[k:]...)...) , is often very inefficient. It copies the elements within
x1[k:] twice and often needs two allocations. This trick might be
optimized specially later but has not yet.
If the free capacity of the base slice is large enough to hold all the inserted
elements, and it is allowed to let the result slice and the base slice share
elements, then the following way is the most efficient, for this way doesn't
allocate.
s = s[:len(s)+len(vs)]
copy(s[i+len(vs):], s[i:])
copy(s[i:], vs)
Note: the above implementations don't consider the cases in which slice
elements might overlap. If such cases can't be ignored, please use the
Insert function in the slices standard package.
If the insertion operations are performed frequently, please consider using

insertion-friendly data structure (such as linked list) instead.
Don't use the second iteration variable in a for-

range loop if high performance is demanded
In the value parts and value sizes article, we have learned that we should
avoid
ranging over an array with two iteration variables if the size of the
array is large, because the array is copied. (Note, if only one iteration
variable is used, then the copy will not be made.)
ranging over a slice or array with two iteration variables if the element
size is large, because each element will be copied to the second
iteration variable once in the iteration process.
We could get an intuitive understanding from the following equivalence

relation:
for i, v := range anArray {

...
}
is equivalent to
{
aCopy := anArray // all elements are copied
var v ElementType // element type of anArray
for i := range aCopy {
v = anArray[i] // each element is copied
...
}
}
That means, if the second iteration variable in a for-range loop is

effectively used when ranging an array, then each element of the array will
be copied twice. (If the ranged container is a slice, then each element will
be copied once.)
In fact, even if the element size of a slice is small, it is still comparatively

less performant to use the second iteration variable in a for-range loop.
This could be proved from the following benchmark code:
package arrays
import "testing"
//go:noinline
func sum_forrange1(s []int) int {
var n = 0
for i := range s {
n += s[i]
}
return n
}
//go:noinline
func sum_forrange2(s []int) int {
var n = 0
n += v
}
return n
}
//go:noinline
func sum_plainfor(s []int) int {
var n = 0
for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
n += s[i]
}
return n
}
var s = make([]int, 1<<16)

var r int
func Benchmark_forrange1(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = sum_forrange1(s)
}
}
func Benchmark_forrange2(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = sum_forrange2(s)
}
}
func Benchmark_plainfor(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = sum_plainfor(s)
}
}
Benchmark_forrange1-4 34044 33793 ns/op

Benchmark_forrange2-4 31474 37819 ns/op
Benchmark_plainfor-4 34646 33704 ns/op
From the benchmark results, we could find that the plain for loop and the
for-range loop with only one iteration variable are both more performant
than the for-range loop which uses the second iteration variable.
Reset all elements of an array or slice

Since Go toolchain v1.5, a special optimization has been introduced, to
efficiently zero the elements in an array or slice. Specifically, the following
one-iteration-variable for-range loop will be the official standard Go
compiler optimized as an internal memclr operation:
// v0 is the zero value literal (might be nil) of

// the element type of the container aSliceOrArray.
for i := range aSliceOrArray {
aSliceOrArray[i] = v0
}
This optimization also works if two iteration variables present but the
second one is the blank identifier _ .
For most cases, the above code is more performant than the following code:
for i := 0; i < len(aSliceOrArray); i++ {

aSliceOrArray[i] = v0
}
On my machine, the memclr way is slower only if the length of the array of
slice is smaller than 6 (element type is byte ).
Before Go toolchain v1.19, the ranged container must be an array or slice to
make this optimization work. Since Go toolchain v1.19, it may be also a
pointer to an array.
In fact, this optimization is more meaningful for slices than for arrays and
array pointers, as there is a more simple (and sometimes more performant)
way to reset array elements:
anArray = ArrayType{}
*anArrayPointer = ArrayType{}
Note: Go 1.21 added a new built-in function, clear , which may be used
to reset all the elements in a slice. So since Go 1.21, we should try to use
the clear function instead of relying on the memclr optimization to
reset slice elements.
Specify capacity explicitly in subslice expression

The current official standard Go compiler (v1.22.n) has an imperfection in
implementation. The imperfection makes it do more index checks for the
slice expression s[i:i+4] than s[i:i+4:i+4] . This leads to, in the
following code, the function g is more performant than the function f .
// subslice_test.go
package arrays
import "testing"
const N = 1 << 10
var s = make([]byte, N)
var r = make([]byte, N/4)
func f(rs []byte, bs []byte) {

for i, j := 0, 0; i < len(bs) - 3; i += 4 {
s2 := bs[i:i+4]
rs[j] = s2[3] ^ s2[0]
j++
}
}
func g(rs []byte, bs []byte) {

for i, j := 0, 0; i < len(bs) - 3; i += 4 {
s2 := bs[i:i+4:i+4]
rs[j] = s2[3] ^ s2[0]
j++
}
}

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
f(r, s)
}
}

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
g(r, s)
}
}

Benchmark_f-4 2676529 445.7 ns/op
Benchmark_g-4 3506199 333.7 ns/op
Use index tables to save some comparisons

In the following code, the bar function is more performant than the foo
function.
func foo(n int) {

switch n % 10 {
case 1, 2, 6, 7, 9:
// do something 1
default:
// do something 2
}
}
var indexTable = [10]bool {

1: true, 2: true, 6: true, 7: true, 9: true,
}
func bar(n int) {

switch {
case indexTable[n % 10]:
// do something 1
default:
// do something 2
}
}
The foo function needs to make one to five comparisons before entering a
branch code block, whereas the bar function always needs only one index
operation. This is why the bar function is more performant.
String and Byte Slices
Conversions between strings and byte slices
Strings could be viewed as element-immutable byte slices. With the
guarantee that the content (the bytes stored in) of a string will never be
modified, any function can safely use the content of the string without
worrying about the content of the string being modified elsewhere.
To make the guarantee (the bytes stored in a string will never be modified),
when converting a string to byte slice, the string and the result byte slice
should not share byte elements. This means that the string content (the
bytes) will be duplicated and stored into the result byte slice (one memory
allocation is needed). Similarly, for the same reason, when converting a
byte slice to string, the byte slice content (the byte elements of the the slice)
will be duplicated and stored into the result string too (one memory
allocation is needed).
In fact, under some situations, the duplications are not necessary. The
current standard Go compiler makes several special optimizations to avoid
duplications for some simple cases. Such optimizations will be listed below.
A string-to-byte-slice conversion following the range keyword

doesn't allocate
If we use the official standard Go compiler to build the following code, the
performance difference between the function f and the function g is
neglectable. The reason is the []byte(s) conversion used in the function f
doesn't make allocations.
func f(s string) {

for i, b := range []byte(s) {
// do something with i and b
_, _ = i, b
}
}
func g(s string) {

for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
b := s[i]
// do something with i and b
_, _ = i, b
}
}
A string-to-byte-slice conversion might not allocate if the bytes

in the conversion result slice will never get modified
Firstly, since Go toolchain 1.7, a string-to-byte-slice conversion following

the range keyword doesn't allocate.
Since Go toolchain 1.12, a conversion []byte(aConstantString) doesn't

allocate if the compiler detects that the bytes in the result slice will never
get modified.
Since Go toolchain 1.22, a conversion []byte(aString) doesn't allocate if

the compiler detects that the bytes in the result slice will never get
modified.
These facts can be verified by the following example:
// string-2-bytes.go
package main
import t "testing"
const x = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
var y = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
func rangeNonConstant() {
for range []byte(y) {}
}
func convertConstant() {
_ = []byte(x)
}
func convertNonConstant() {
_ = []byte(y)
}
func main() {
stat := func(f func()) int {
allocs := t.AllocsPerRun(10, f)
return int(allocs)
}
println(
stat(rangeNonConstant),
stat(convertConstant),
stat(convertNonConstant),
)
}
The outputs with different toolchain versions:
$ gotv 1.6. run string-2-bytes.go

[Run]: $HOME/.cache/gotv/tag_go1.6.4/bin/go run string-2-
bytes.go
1 1 1
bytes.go
0 1 1
bytes.go
0 1 1
bytes.go
0 0 1
bytes.go
0 0 1
bytes.go
0 0 0
Sadly, the latest compiler (v1.22.n) is still not smart enough to remove the
byte duplication in the conversions shown in the following code:
package main
import "bytes"
import t "testing"
var y = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
var s = []byte(y)
func compareNonConstants() {
_ = bytes.Compare([]byte(y), []byte(y))
}
func concatStringAndBytes() {
_ = append([]byte(y), s...)
}
func main() {
return int(allocs)
}
println(stat(compareNonConstants)) // 2
println(stat(concatStringAndBytes)) // 2
}
A byte-slice-to-string conversion appearing as a comparison

operand doesn't allocate
The following is the implementation of the Equal function in the bytes

standard package. In the implementation, the two conversions both don't
duplicate the byte elements of the corresponding arguments.
func Equal(a, b []byte) bool {
return string(a) == string(b)
}
This optimization leads to the verbose function is more efficient than the
clean function shown in the following code (as of the official standard Go
compiler v1.22.n):
package main
import t "testing"
func verbose(x, y, z []byte){

switch {
case string(x) == string(y):
// do something
case string(x) == string(z):
// do something
}
}
func clean(x, y, z []byte){

switch string(x) {
case string(y):
// do something
case string(z):
// do something
}
}
func main() {
x := []byte{1023: 'x'}
y := []byte{1023: 'y'}
z := []byte{1023: 'z'}
stat := func(f func(x, y, z []byte)) int {
allocs := t.AllocsPerRun(10, func() {
f(x, y, z)
})
return int(allocs)
}
println(stat(verbose)) // 0
println(stat(clean)) // 3
}
From the outputs, we could get that the the verbose function doesn't make
allocations but the simple function makes three ones, which is just the
reason why the former one is more performant.
The performance difference between the two functions might be removed

since a future Go toolchain version.
We could also use the bytes.Compare function to compare two byte slices.
The bytes.Compare function way is often more performant for the cases in
which three-way comparisons (like the following code shows) are needed.
// Note, two branches are enough

// to form a three-way comparison.
func doSomething(x, y []byte) {
switch bytes.Compare(x, y) {
case -1:
// ... do something 1
case 1:
default:
}
}
Don't use the bytes.Compare function in simple (one-way) byte slice

comparisons, as the following code shows. It is slower for such cases.
func doSomething(x, y []byte) {

if bytes.Compare(x, y) == 0 {
... // do something
}
}
A byte-slice-to-string conversion appearing as the index key of

a map element retrieval expression doesn't allocate
Note: this optimization is not made for map element modification

statements. This could be proved by the following example, in which the
conversion string(key) in the get function doesn't allocate, but the two
conversions in the other two functions do allocate.
package main
import t "testing"
var m = map[string]int{}
var key = []byte{'k', 'e', 'y'}
var n int
func get() {
n = m[string(key)]
}
func inc() {
m[string(key)]++
}
func set() {
m[string(key)] = 123
}
func main() {
return int(allocs)
}
println(stat(get)) // 0
println(stat(set)) // 1
println(stat(inc)) // 1
}
This optimization also works if the key presents as a struct or array

composite literal form: T1{... Tn{..., string(key), ...} ...} , where
Tx is either a struct type or an array type. For example, the conversion
string(key) in the following code doesn't do duplications, too.
package main
import t "testing"
type T struct {
a int
b bool
k [2]string
}
var m = map[T]int{}
var key = []byte{'k', 'e', 'y', 99: 'z'}
var n int
func get() {
n = m[T{k: [2]string{1: string(key)}}]
}
func main() {
print(int(t.AllocsPerRun(10, get))) // 0
}
This optimization leads to an interesting case. In the following code snippet,

the function modify1 makes one allocation but the function modify2 makes
none, so the function modify2 is more performant than the function
modify1 . The reason could be easily found out from their respective
equivalent forms. The string(key) used in the function modify2 only
appears in a map element retrieval expression, whereas the string(key)
used in the function modify1 should be thought as appearing in a map
element modification statement.
package main
import t "testing"
var key = []byte{'k', 'e', 'y'}
var m1 = map[string]int{"key": 0}
func modify1() {
m1[string(key)]++
// (logically) equivalent to:
// m1[string(key)] = m1[string(key)] + 1
}
var m2 = map[string]*int{"key": new(int)}

func modify2() {
*m2[string(key)]++
// equivalent to:
// p := m2[string(key)]; *p = *p + 1
}
func main() {
return int(allocs)
}
println(stat(modify1)) // 1
println(stat(modify2)) // 0
}
So if the entries of a map are seldom deleted but the elements of the map
are modified frequently, it is best to use a pointer type as the map element
type.
A byte-slice-to-string conversion appearing as an operand in a

string concatenation expression doesn't allocate if at least one
of concatenated operands is a non-blank string constant
In the following example, the function f (the a bit more verbose one) is
much more efficient than the function g for most cases (as of the Go
toolchain v1.22.n).
package main
import "testing"
var s = []byte{0: '$', 32: 'x'} // len(s) == 33
func f() string {

return (" " + string(s) + string(s))[1:]
}
func g() string {

return string(s) + string(s)
}
var x string
func stat(add func() string) int {
c := func() {
x = add()
}
allocs := testing.AllocsPerRun(10, c)
return int(allocs)
}
func main() {
println(stat(g)) // 3
}
Please note that, currently (Go toolchain 1.22 versions), this optimization is
only useful for byte slices with lengths larger than 32. If we change the
length of the string s to 32 (by declaring it with var s = []byte{31:
'x'} ), then the performance difference between the functions f and g will
become neglectable. Please read the next section for the reason.
The a bit verbose way actually has a drawback: it wastes at least one byte
more memory. If, at coding time, we know the byte value at a specified
index of one operand, the this drawback could be avoided. For example,
assume we know the first byte of the first operand is always $ , then we
could modify the a bit verbose way as the following code shows, to avoid
wasting more memory.
func f() string {

return "$" + string(s[1:]) + string(s)
}
Please note that, this optimization is some unintended. It might be not

supported any more since a future Go toolchain version.
If the result of an operation is a string or byte slice, and the

length of the result is larger than 32, then the byte elements of
the result will be always allocated on heap
In fact, recall that the example in the last section uses a byte slice with 33
bytes, the reason is to avoid allocating the byte elements of the string
concatenation operands on stack.
In the following program, the function g needs 3 heap allocations, but the
function f needs none. The only differences between the two functions are
the lengths of the involved byte slice and strings. The function f actually
makes 3 stack allocations, but the function testing.AllocsPerRun only
counts heap allocations.
package main
import "testing"
var str = "1234567890abcdef" // len(str) == 16
func f() {
x := str + str // does not escape
y := []byte(x) // does not escape
println(len(y), cap(y)) // 32 32
z := string(y) // does not escape
println(len(x), len(z)) // 32 32
}
func g() {
x := str + str + "x" // does not escape
y := []byte(x) // does not escape
println(len(y), cap(y)) // 33 48
z := string(y) // does not escape
println(len(x), len(z)) // 33 33
}
func stat(fn func()) int {

allocs := testing.AllocsPerRun(10, fn)
return int(allocs)
}
func main() {
println(stat(g)) // 3
}
In the following benchmark code, the concat_splited way is more

performant than the normal concat way, because the conversions in the
former way don't make heap allocations.
package bytes
import "testing"
var s37 = []byte{36: 'x'} // len(s37) == 37

var str string
func Benchmark_concat(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
str = string(s37) + string(s37)
}
}
func Benchmark_concat_splited(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
str = string(s37[:32]) +
string(s37[32:]) +
string(s37[:32]) +
string(s37[32:])
}
}
Benchmark_concat-4 420.6 ns/op 176 B/op 3 allocs/op

Benchmark_concat_splited-4 359.7 ns/op 80 B/op 1 allocs/op
Efficient ways to concatenate strings
There are two principal ways to effectively concatenate strings in Go: use
the + operator and use strings.Builder . Each way has its own advantages
and drawbacks.
The + operator is mainly used to effectively concatenate multiple strings in

one statement. If it is impossible to use the + operator to concatenate some
strings in one statement, then it is more efficient to use strings.Builder
to concatenate them.
The byte elements of the result string of using strings.Builder will be

always allocated on heap. On the other hand, by using the + operator, the
byte elements of the result string will be allocated on stack if the length of
the result string is small (not larger than 32) and the result string doesn't
escape to heap.
The strings.Builder way calls the make function to allocate enough

bytes for concatenations and the make call zeros those bytes, which is
unnecessarily.
For the above two reasons, in theory, the + operator way should be always
more performant than the strings.Builder way. However, for a runtime
implementation imperfection (in Go 1.15/1.16/1.17), sometimes the +
operator way might be a little slower than the strings.Builder way. This
imperfection has been fixed since Go 1.18.
Let's compare the efficiencies of the two ways.

package bytes
import "testing"
import "strings"
const M, N, K = 12, 16, 32
var s1 = strings.Repeat("a", M)
var s2 = strings.Repeat("a", N)
var s3 = strings.Repeat("a", K)
var r1, r2 string
func init() {
println("======", M, N, K)
}
//go:noinline
func Concat_WithPlus(a, b, c string) string {
return a + b + c
}
//go:noinline
func Concat_WithBuilder(ss ...string) string {
var b strings.Builder
var n = 0
for _, s := range ss {
n += len(s)
}
b.Grow(n)
b.WriteString(s)
}
return b.String()
}
func Benchmark_Concat_WithPlus(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r1 = Concat_WithPlus(s1, s2, s3)
r2 = Concat_WithPlus(s3, s3, s3)
}
}
func Benchmark_Concat_WithBuilder(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r1 = Concat_WithBuilder(s1, s2, s3)
r2 = Concat_WithBuilder(s3, s3, s3)
}
}
====== 12 16 32
Benchmark_Concat_WithPlus-4 192.2 ns/op
Benchmark_Concat_WithBuilder-4 196.8 ns/op
So if it is possible to do the whole concatenation in one statement,

generally, we should use the + operator to concatenate strings for its
simplicity and great performance.
The strings.Builder way might waste some memory

sometimes
The strings.Builder way is great to build a string from unknown number

(at coding time) of strings and byte slices. When using this way to build a
string, if it is possible, we should determine the length of the final built
string in advance and call the Grow method of a strings.Builder value to
grow the underlying byte slice to that length in one step.
However, for some cases, it might be impossible or inconvenient to

calculate the length of the final built string in advance. In such cases, the
underlying byte slice used by a strings.Builder value will grow when
needed. It might grow to a capacity which is larger than the length of the
final built string. As the final built string will reuse the memory block of the
underlying byte slice, there will be some memory wasted in the end.
Use byte slice to concatenate strings
There is actually a third way to concatenate strings: build a byte slice, then
copy the bytes from the concatenated strings to the byte slice, finally
convert the byte slice to the result string.
The byte slice way is almost the same as the implementation of the
strings.Builder way, except that the final conversion (from byte slice to
string) needs a memory allocation, whereas the strings.Builder way uses
unsafe mechanism to avoid the allocation. So in theory, the byte slice way
should be always slower than the the strings.Builder way. However, if
the byte slice used in the byte slice way is created with a constant capacity,
then its elements might be allocated on stack, which is an advantage over
the strings.Builder way. The advantage might make the byte slice way
faster than the above introduced two ways for some use cases.
In the following benchmark code, if the length of the package-level string s

is not larger than 16, then the Concat_WithBytes way is more performant
than the Concat_WithPlus way; otherwise, the Concat_WithBytes way is
slower.
package bytes
import "testing"
var s = "1234567890abcdef" // len(s) == 16

var r string
//go:noinline
func Concat_WithPlus(a, b, c, d string) string {
return a + b + c + d
}
//go:noinline
func Concat_WithBytes(ss ...string) string {
var n = 0
n += len(s)
}
var bs []byte
if n > 64 {
bs = make([]byte, 0, n) // escapes to heap
} else {
bs = make([]byte, 0, 64) // does not escape
}
bs = append(bs, s...)
}
return string(bs)
}
func Benchmark_Concat_WithPlus(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = Concat_WithPlus(s, s, s, s)
}
}
func Benchmark_Concat_WithBytes(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = Concat_WithBytes(s, s, s, s)
}
}
The benchmark results (when the length of s is 16):

Benchmark_Concat_WithBytes-4 208.3 ns/op
The benchmark results (when the length of s is 17):

Benchmark_Concat_WithBytes-4 357.5 ns/op
We could also modify the byte elements of the slice as needed before
converting the slice to the final string. This is another benefit comparing to
the other two ways.
Merge a string and a byte slice into a new byte slice

Sometimes, we need to merge a string ( str ) a byte slice ( bs ) into a new
byte slice. There are two ways to achieve this goal.
Way 1 (the one-line way):

var newByteSlice = append([]byte(str), bs...)
Way 2 (the verbose way):
var newByteSlice = make([]byte, len(str) + len(bs))

copy(newByteSlice, str)
copy(newByteSlice[len(str):], bs)
Generlaly, if the length of the string is much larger than the byte slice, then
the verbose way is more performant. On the contrary, if the length of the
byte slice is much larger than the string, then the one-line way is more
performant.
Sadly, currently (Go toolchain 1.22 versions), there is not an extreme

performant way to do the merge.
In the one-line way, the conversion []byte(str) will duplicate the

underlying of the string, which is unnecessarily.
In the verbose way, the elements within newByteSlice[len(str):]
will be unnecessarily zeroed in the make call.
The strings.Compare function is not very

performant now
Currently (Go 1.22), the implementation of the strings.Compare function
is deliberately not implemented in the most performant way. In other words,
it is not recommended to be used in practice now. Instead, it is
recommended by Go core developers to use comparison operators to
compare strings. In my honest opinion, it is an infeasible idea for all
scenarios. After all, the two ways both have their respective best use
scenarios.
The following code shows the current implementation of the

strings.Compare function. The implementation is inefficient for the cases
that the two argument strings are not equal but they have the same length.
For such cases, two raw comparisons are performed.
package strings
func Compare(a, b string) int {

if a == b {
return 0
}
if a < b {
return -1
}
return +1
}
As a contrast, the implementation of the bytes.Compare function is highly

optimized by calling an internal function bytealg.Compare .
package bytes
func Compare(a, b []byte) int {

return bytealg.Compare(a, b)
}
Hope future Go versions could optimize this function.

The strings.Compare function is expected to be used in three-way string
comparisons, as the following code shows:
func foo(x, y string) {

switch strings.Compare(x, y) {
case -1:
// do something 1
case 0:
// do something 2
case 1:
// do something 3
}
}
As the strings.Compare function is not very efficient now, some people

would use comparison operators to do the job instead. But please note that,
if the lengths of the comparison operands are often not equal, then we
should not handle the "equal" cases in the default branch. For example, in
the following code, the function f3 is often less performant than the other
two functions. The reason is the comparison x == y is much faster than x
< y and x > y if the lengths of the comparison operands are not equal.
func f1(x, y string) {

switch {
case x == y: // ... handle 1
case x < y: // ... handle 2
default: // ... handle 3
}
}

switch {
case x == y: // ... handle 1
}
}

switch {
case x > y: // ... handle 3
}
}
Another note is, even if the strings.Compare function is highly optimized,

we still should not compare its call with 0 in comparisons using the == or
!= operator. More specifically,
strings.Compare(x, y) == 0
strings.Compare(x, y) != 0
are less efficient than
x == y
x != y
when the lengths of x and y are not equal.
Avoid allocations if possible

String and byte slice operations often involve memory allocations. Many
allocated memory blocks in such operations are short-lived. To make
program run efficiently, we should try to allocate less short-lived memory
blocks.
In this section, some examples will be provided to show how to save

allocations under some situations.
In the following example, the function f is more efficient than the function
g . The reason is the former makes one allocation, whereas the latter makes
two.
func f(a, b, c string) {

abc := a + b + c
ab := abc[:len(abc)-len(c)]
...
}
func g(a, b, c string) {

ab := a + b
abc := ab + c
...
}
In the following code, using array values as the map keys is more
performant than using strings as the map keys, because the former way
doesn't allocate in building entry keys.
package bytes
import "testing"
var ma = make(map[[2]string]struct{})
var ms = make(map[string]struct{})
var keyparts = []string {

"docs", "aaa",
"pictures", "bbb",
"downloads", "ccc",
}
func fa(a, b string) {

ma[[2]string{a, b}] = struct{}{}
}
func fs(a, b string) {

ms[a + "/" + b] = struct{}{}
}
func Benchmark_array_key(b1 *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b1.N; i++ {
for i := 0; i < len(keyparts); i+= 2 {
fa(keyparts[i], keyparts[i+1])
}
for key := range ma {delete(ma, key)}
}
}
func Benchmark_string_key(b1 *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b1.N; i++ {
for i := 0; i < len(keyparts); i+= 2 {
fs(keyparts[i], keyparts[i+1])
}
for key := range ms {delete(ms, key)}
}
}
The benchmark result:
Benchmark_array_key-4 147.0 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op

Benchmark_string_key-4 507.9 ns/op 40 B/op 3 allocs/op
We could also use struct values as the map keys, which should be as
performant as using array keys.
The third example, which shows the performance difference between two
ways of string comparisons by ignoring cases.
package bytes
import "testing"
import "strings"
var ss = []string {
"AbcDefghijklmnOpQrStUvwxYz1234567890",
"abcDefghijklmnopQRSTuvwXYZ1234567890",
"aBcDefgHIjklMNOPQRSTuvwxyz1234567890",
}
func Benchmark_EqualFold(b1 *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b1.N; i++ {
for _, a := range ss {
for _, b := range ss {
r := strings.EqualFold(a, b)
if !r {panic("not equal!")}
}
}
}
}
func Benchmark_CompareToLower(b1 *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b1.N; i++ {
for _, a := range ss {
for _, b := range ss {
r := strings.ToLower(a) ==
strings.ToLower(b)
if !r {panic("not equal!")}
}
}
}
}
From the following benchmark results, we know the EqualFold way is

much more performant the ToLower comparison way, because the former
way doesn't allocate.
Benchmark_EqualFold-4 1271 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op

Benchmark_CompareToLower-4 7157 ns/op 864 B/op 18 allocs/op
The io.Writer type in the standard library only has one method:
Write([]byte) (int, error) . When a string needs to be written, it must
be converted to a byte slice before being passed to the Write method. This
is quite inefficient. In the following code, a BytesWriter type is
implemented to support writing strings without converting the strings to
byte slices.
package bytes
import "testing"
import "io"
type BytesWriter struct {

io.Writer
buf []byte
}
func NewBytesWriter(w io.Writer, bufLen int) *BytesWriter {

return &BytesWriter {
Writer: w,
buf: make([]byte, bufLen),
}
}
func (sw *BytesWriter) WriteString(s string) (int, error) {

var sum int
var err error
for len(s) > 0 {
n := copy(sw.buf, s)
n, err = sw.Write(sw.buf[:n])
sum += n
s = s[n:]
if err != nil || n == 0 {
break
}
}
if err == nil && len(s) > 0 {
err = io.ErrShortWrite
}
return sum, err
}
type DummyWriter struct{}
func (dw DummyWriter) Write(bs []byte) (int, error) {

return len(bs), nil
}
var s = string(make([]byte, 500))

var w io.Writer = DummyWriter{}
var bytesw = NewBytesWriter(DummyWriter{}, 512)
func Benchmark_BytesWriter(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
bytesw.WriteString(s)
}
}
func Benchmark_GeneralWriter(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
w.Write([]byte(s))
}
}
Benchmark_BytesWriter-4 21.03 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op

Benchmark_GeneralWriter-4 390.3 ns/op 512 B/op 1 allocs/op
From the benchmark results, we could find that the BytesWriter way is
much more performant than the general io.Writer way, because the
former way doesn't allocate (except the single buffer allocation).
Please note, there is a type in the standard package, bufio.Writer , which
acts like the BytesWriter type. Generally, we should use that type instead.
BCE (Bound Check Eliminate)
Go is a memory safe language. In array/slice/string element indexing and
subslice operations, Go runtime will check whether or not the involved
indexes are out of range. If an index is out of range, a panic will be
produced to prevent the invalid index from doing harm. This is called
bounds checking.
Bounds checks make our code run safely, on the other hand, they also make
our code run a little slower. This is a trade-off a safe language must made.
Since Go toolchain v1.7, the standard Go compiler has started to support

BCE (bounds check elimination). BCE can avoid some unnecessary bounds
checks, so that the standard Go compiler could generate more efficient
programs.
The following will list some examples to show in which cases BCE works
and in which cases BCE doesn't work.
We could use the -d=ssa/check_bce compiler option to show which code

lines need bound checks.
Example 1
A simple example:
// example1.go
package main
func f1a(s []struct{}, index int) {
_ = s[index] // line 5: Found IsInBounds
_ = s[index]
_ = s[index:]
_ = s[:index+1]
}
func f1b(s []byte, index int) {

s[index-1] = 'a' // line 12: Found IsInBounds
_ = s[:index]
}
func f1c(a [5]int) {

_ = a[0]
_ = a[4]
}
func f1d(s []int) {

if len(s) > 2 {
_, _, _ = s[0], s[1], s[2]
}
}
func f1e(s []byte) {

if len(s) >= 2 {
r := len(s) % 2
_ = s[r]
}
}
func f1g(s []int) {

middle := len(s) / 2
_ = s[:middle]
_ = s[middle:]
}
func main() {}
Let's run it with the -d=ssa/check_bce compiler option:
$ go run -gcflags="-d=ssa/check_bce" example1.go

./example1.go:5:7: Found IsInBounds
The outputs show that only two code lines needs bound checks in the above
example code.
Note that: * Go toolchains with version smaller than 1.19 fail to remove the
unnecessary bound check in the f1e function. * Go toolchains with version
smaller than 1.21 fail to remove the unnecessary bound check in the f1g
function.
And note that, up to now (Go toolchain v1.22.n), the official standard
compiler doesn't check BCE for an operation in a generic function if the
operation involves type parameters and the generic function is never
instantiated. For example, the command go run -gcflags=-
d=ssa/check_bce bar.go will report nothing.
// bar.go
package bar
func foo[E any](s []E) {

_ = s[0] // line 5
_ = s[1] // line 6
_ = s[2] // line 7
}
// var _ = foo[bool]
However, if the variable declaration line is enabled, then the compiler will
report:
./bar.go:5:7: Found IsInBounds

Example 2
All the bound checks in the slice element indexing and subslice operations
shown in the following example are eliminated.
// example2.go
package main
func f2a(s []int) {

for i := range s {
_ = s[i]
_ = s[i:len(s)]
_ = s[:i+1]
}
}
func f2b(s []int) {

for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
_ = s[i]
_ = s[i:len(s)]
_ = s[:i+1]
}
}
func f2c(s []int) {

for i := len(s) - 1; i >= 0; i-- {
_ = s[i]
_ = s[i:len(s)]
_ = s[:i+1]
}
}
func f2d(s []int) {

for i := len(s); i > 0; {
i--
_ = s[i]
_ = s[i:len(s)]
_ = s[:i+1]
}
}
func f2e(s []int) {

for i := 0; i < len(s) - 1; i += 2 {
_ = s[i]
_ = s[i:len(s)]
_ = s[:i+1]
}
}
func main() {}
Run it, we will find that nothing is outputted. Yes, the official standard Go
compiler is so clever that it finds all bound checks may be removed in the
above example code.
$ go run -gcflags="-d=ssa/check_bce" example2.go
There are still some small imperfections. If we modify the f2g and f2h
functions as that shown in the following code, then the compiler (v1.22.n)
fails to remove the bound checks for the two subslice operations.
// example2b.go
package main
func f2g(s []int) {

for i := len(s) - 1; i >= 0; i-- {
//_ = s[i]
_ = s[:i+1] // line 7: Found IsSliceInBounds
}
}
func f2h(s []int) {

for i := 0; i <= len(s) - 1; i++ {
//_ = s[i]
_ = s[:i+1] // line 14: Found IsSliceInBounds
}
}
func main() {}
Run it, we will get the following output:

$ go run -gcflags="-d=ssa/check_bce" example2b.go
./example2b.go:7:8: Found IsSliceInBounds
./example2b.go:14:8: Found IsSliceInBounds
We may give the compiler some hints by turning on the comment lines to
remove these bound checks.
Example 3
We should try to evaluate the element indexing or subslice operation with
the largest index as earlier as possible to reduce the number of bound
checks.
In the following example, if the expression s[3] is evaluated without

panicking, then the bound checks for s[0] , s[1] and s[2] could be
eliminated.
// example3.go
package main
func f3a(s []int32) int32 {

return s[0] | // Found IsInBounds (line 5)
s[1] | // Found IsInBounds
s[2] | // Found IsInBounds
s[3] // Found IsInBounds
}
func f3b(s []int32) int32 {

return s[3] | // Found IsInBounds (line 12)
s[0] |
s[1] |
s[2]
}
func main() {
}
Run it, we get:

From the output, we could learn that there are 4 bound checks in the f3a
function, but only one in the f3b function.
Example 4
Since Go toolchain v1.19, the bould check in the f5a function is
successfully removed,
func f5a(isa []int, isb []int) {

if len(isa) > 0xFFF {
for _, n := range isb {
_ = isa[n & 0xFFF]
}
}
}
However, before Go toolchain v1.19, the check is not removed. The

compilers before version 1.19 need a hint to be removed, as shown in the
f5b function:
func f5b(isa []int, isb []int) {

// A successful hint (for v1.18- compilers)
isa = isa[:0xFFF+1]
_ = isa[n & 0xFFF] // BCEed!
}
}
}
func f5c(isa []int, isb []int) {

// A not-workable hint (for v1.18- compilers)
_ = isa[:0xFFF+1]
_ = isa[n & 0xFFF] // Found IsInBounds
}
}
}
func f5d(isa []int, isb []int) {

// A not-workable hint (for v1.18- compilers)
_ = isa[0xFFF]
_ = isa[n & 0xFFF] // Found IsInBounds
}
}
}
The next section shows more cases which need compiler hints to avoid
some unnecessary bound checks.
Sometimes, the compiler needs some hints to

remove some bound checks
The official standard Go compiler is still not smart enough to remove all
unnecessary bound checks. Sometimes, the compiler needs to be given
some hints to remove some bound checks.
In the following example, by adding one hint line in the function f4b , all
bound checks in the loop are eliminated.
func f4a(is []int, bs []byte) {

if len(is) >= 256 {
for _, n := range bs {
_ = is[n] // Found IsInBounds
}
}
}
func f4b(is []int, bs []byte) {

if len(is) >= 256 {
is = is[:256] // a successful hint
_ = is[n] // BCEed!
}
}
}
func f4c(is []int, bs []byte) {

if len(is) >= 256 {
_ = is[:256] // a non-workable hint
}
}
}
func f4d(is []int, bs []byte) {

if len(is) >= 256 {
_ = is[255] // a non-workable hint
}
}
}
Please note that, as of Go toolchain v1.22.n, the two hints used in the f4c
and f4d functions are not workable (but they should).
In the following example, by adding a redundant if code block in the

function NumSameBytes_2 , all bound checks in the loop are eliminated.
type T = string
func NumSameBytes_1(x, y T) int {

if len(x) > len(y) {
x, y = y, x
}
for i := 0; i < len(x); i++ {
if x[i] !=
y[i] { // Found IsInBounds
return i
}
}
return len(x)
}

x, y = y, x
}
// a successful hint
panic("unreachable")
}
for i := 0; i < len(x); i++ {

if x[i] != y[i] { // BCEed!
return i
}
}
return len(x)
}
The above hint works when T is either a string type or a slice type, whereas
each of the following two hints only works for one case (as of Go toolchain
v1.22.n).

x, y = y, x
}
y = y[:len(x)] // a hint, only works if T is slice
for i := 0; i < len(x); i++ {
if x[i] != y[i] {
return i
}
}
return len(x)
}

x, y = y, x
}
_ = y[:len(x)] // a hint, only works if T is string

for i := 0; i < len(x); i++ {
if x[i] != y[i] {
return i
}
}
return len(x)
}
Please note that, the future versions of the standard official Go compiler
will become smarter so that the above hints will become unnecessary later.
Write code in BCE-friendly ways

In the following example, the f7b and f7c functions makes 3 less bound
checks than f7a .
func f7a(s []byte, i int) {
_ = s[i+3] // Found IsInBounds
_ = s[i] // Found IsInBounds
}
func f7b(s []byte, i int) {

s = s[i:i+4] // Found IsSliceInBounds
_ = s[3]
_ = s[2]
_ = s[1]
_ = s[0]
}
func f7c(s []byte, i int) {

s = s[i:i+4:i+4] // Found IsSliceInBounds
_ = s[3]
_ = s[2]
_ = s[1]
_ = s[0]
}
However, please note that, there might be some other factors which will
affect program performances. On my machine (Intel i5-4210U CPU @
1.70GHz, Linux/amd64), among the above 3 functions, the function f7b is
actually the least performant one.
Benchmark_f7a-4 3861 ns/op

Benchmark_f7b-4 4223 ns/op
Benchmark_f7c-4 3477 ns/op
In practice, it is encouraged to use the three-index subslice form ( f7c ).
In the following example, benchmark results show that
the f8z function is the most performant one (in line with expectation)
but the f8y function is as performant as the f8x function
(unexpected).
func f8x(s []byte) {

var n = len(s)
s = s[:n]
for i := 0; i <= n - 4; i += 4 {
_ = s[i]
}
}
func f8y(s []byte) {

for i := 0; i <= len(s) - 4; i += 4 {
s2 := s[i:]
_ = s2[3] // Found IsInBounds
_ = s2[2]
_ = s2[1]
_ = s2[0]
}
}
func f8z(s []byte) {

for i := 0; len(s) >= 4; i += 4 {
_ = s[3]
_ = s[2]
_ = s[1]
_ = s[0]
s = s[4:]
}
}
In fact, benchmark results also show the following f8y3 function is as

performant as the f8z function and the performance of the f8y2 function is
on par with the f8y function. So it is encouraged to use three-index subslice
forms for such situations in practice.
func f8y2(s []byte) {

for i := 0; i < len(s) - 3; i += 4 {
s2 := s[i:i+4] // Found IsInBounds
_ = s2[3]
_ = s2[2]
_ = s2[1]
_ = s2[0]
}
}
func f8y3(s []byte) {

for i := 0; i < len(s) - 3; i += 4 {
s2 := s[i:i+4:i+4] // Found IsInBounds
_ = s2[3]
_ = s2[2]
_ = s2[1]
_ = s2[0]
}
}
In the following example, there are no bound checks in the f9b and f9c
functions, but there is one in the f9a function.
func f9a(n int) []int {

buf := make([]int, n+1)
k := 0
for i := 0; i <= n; i++ {
buf[i] = k // Found IsInBounds
k++
}
return buf
}
func f9b(n int) []int {

k := 0
for i := 0; i < len(buf); i++ {
buf[i] = k
k++
}
return buf
}
func f9c(n int) []int {

k := 0
for i := 0; i < n+1; i++ {
buf[i] = k
k++
}
return buf
}
In the following code, the function f0b is much more performant than f0a .
func f0a(x [16]byte) (r [4]byte){

for i := 0; i < 4; i++ {
r[i] =
x[i*4+3] ^ // Found IsInBounds
x[i*4] // Found IsInBounds
}
return
}
func f0b(x [16]byte) (r [4]byte){

r[0] = x[3] ^ x[2] ^ x[1] ^ x[0]
r[1] = x[7] ^ x[6] ^ x[5] ^ x[4]
r[2] = x[11] ^ x[10] ^ x[9] ^ x[8]
r[3] = x[15] ^ x[14] ^ x[13] ^ x[12]
return
}
Global (package-level) slices are often unfriendly to BCE, so we should try

to assign them to local ones to eliminate some unnecessary bound checks.
For example, in the following code, the fa0 function does one more bound
check than the fa1 and fa2 functions, so the function calls fa1() and
fa2(s) are both more performant than fa0() .
func fa0() {
for i := range s {
s[i] = i // Found IsInBounds
}
}
func fa1() {
s := s
for i := range s {
s[i] = i
}
}
func fa2(x []int) {

for i := range x {
x[i] = i
}
}
Arrays are often more BCE-friendly than slices. In the following code, the
array version functions ( fb2 and fc2 ) don't need bound checks.

var a = [256]int{}
func fb1() int {

return s[100] // Found IsInBounds
}
func fb2() int {

return a[100]
}
func fc1(n byte) int {

return s[n] // Found IsInBounds
}
func fc2(n byte) int {
return a[n]
}
Please note that, the future versions of the standard official Go compiler
will become smarter so that some BCE-unfriendly code might become
BCE-friendly later.
The current official standard Go compiler fails to

eliminate some unnecessary bound checks
As of Go toolchain v1.22.n, the official standard Go compiler doesn't
eliminate the following unnecessary bound checks.
func fb(s, x, y []byte) {

n := copy(s, x)
copy(s[n:], y) // Found IsSliceInBounds
_ = x[n:] // Found IsSliceInBounds
}
func fc(s []byte) {

const N = 6
for i := 0; i < len(s)-(N-1); i += N {
_ = s[i+N-1] // Found IsInBounds
}
}
func fd(data []int, check func(int) bool) []int {

var k = 0
for _, v := range data {
if check(v) {
data[k] = v // Found IsInBounds
k++
}
}
return data[:k] // Found IsSliceInBounds
}
The future versions of the standard official Go compiler will become

smarter so that the above unnecessary bound checks will be eliminated
later.
Maps
In Go, the capacity of a map is unlimited in theory, it is only limited by
available memory. That is why the built-in cap function doesn't apply to
maps.
In the official standard Go runtime implementation, maps are implemented

as hashtables internally. Each map/hashtable maintains a backing array to
store map entries (key-value pairs). Along with more and more entries are
put into a map, the size of the backing array might be thought as too small
to store more entries, thus a new larger backing array will be allocated and
the current entries (in the old backing array) will be moved to it, then the
old backing array will be discarded.
In the official standard Go runtime implementation, the backing array of a

map will never shrink, even if all entries are deleted from the map. This is a
form of memory wasting. But in practice, this is seldom a problem and and
actually often good for program performances.
Clear map entries

We could use the following loop to clear all entries in a map:
for key := range aMap {

delete(aMap, key)
}
The loop is specially optimized (except entries with NaN keys exist) so that
its execution is very fast. However, please note that, as mentioned above,
the backing array of the cleared map doesn't shrink after the loop. Then how
to release the backing array of the map? There are two ways:
aMap = nil
// or
aMap = make(map[K]V)
If the backing array of the map is not referenced elsewhere, then the
backing array will be collected eventually after being released.
If there will be many new entries to be put in the map after it is cleared,
then the former way is preferred; otherwise, the latter (release) ways are
preferred.
Note: since Go 1.21, there is a better way to do this job. Go 1.21 introduced
a new built-in function, clear , which may be used to clear all entries in a
map, including those ones with NaN keys.
aMap[key]++ is more efficient than aMap[key] =

aMap[key] + 1
In the statement aMap[key] = aMap[key] + 1 , the key are hashed twice,

but in the statement aMap[key]++ , it is only hashed once.
Similarly, aMap[key] += value is more efficient than aMap[key] =

aMap[key] + value .
These could be proved by the following benchmark code:
package maps
import "testing"
var m = map[int]int{}
func Benchmark_increment(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
m[99]++
}
}
func Benchmark_plusone(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
m[99] += 1
}
}
func Benchmark_addition(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
m[99] = m[99] + 1
}
}
Benchmark_increment-4 11.31 ns/op

Benchmark_plusone-4 11.21 ns/op
Benchmark_addition-4 16.10 ns/op
Pointers in maps
If the key type and element type of a map both don't contain pointers, then
in the scan phase of a GC cycle, the garbage collector will not scan the
entries of the map. This could save much time.
This tip is also valid for other kinds of container in Go, such as slices,
arrays and channels.
Using byte arrays instead of short strings as keys

Internally, each string contains a pointer, which points to the underlying
bytes of that string. So if the key or element type of a map is a string type,
then all the entries of the map needs to be scanned in GC cycles.
If we can make sure that the string values used in the entries of a map have
a max length and the max length is small, then we could use the array type
[N]byte to replace the string types (where N is the max string length).
Doing this will save much garbage collection scanning time if the number
of the entries in the map is very large.
For example, in the following code, the entries of mapB contain no pointers,
but the (string) keys of mapA contain pointers. So garbage collector will
skip mapB during the scan phase of a GC cycle.
var mapA = make(map[string]int, 1 << 16)

var mapB = make(map[[32]byte]int, 1 << 16)
And please note that, the official standard compiler makes special
optimizations on hashing map keys whose sizes are 4 or 8 bytes. So, from
the point of view of saving CPU, it is better to use map[[8]byte]V instead
of map[[5]byte]V , and it is better to use map[int32]V instead of
map[int16]V .
Lower map element modification frequency

In the previous "strings and byte slices" chapter, it has been mentioned that
a byte-slice-to-string conversion appearing as the index key in a map
element retrieval expression doesn't allocate, but such conversions in L-
value map element index expressions will allocate.
So sometimes, we could lower the frequency of using such conversions in

L-value map element index expressions to improve program performance.
In the following example, the B way (pointer element way) is more

performant than the A way. The reason is the B way modifies element
values rarely. The elements in the B way are pointers, once they are created,
they are never changed.
package maps
import "testing"
var wordCounterA = make(map[string]int)

var wordCounterB = make(map[string]*int)
var key = make([]byte, 64)
func IncA(w []byte) {

wordCounterA[string(w)]++
}
func IncB(w []byte) {
p := wordCounterB[string(w)]
if p == nil {
p = new(int)
wordCounterB[string(w)] = p
}
*p++
}
func Benchmark_A(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
for i := range key {
IncA(key[:i])
}
}
}
func Benchmark_B(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
IncB(key[:i])
}
}
}
Benchmark_A-4 11600 ns/op 2336 B/op 62 allocs/op

Benchmark_B-4 1543 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
Although the B way (pointer element way) is less CPU consuming, it

creates many pointers, which increases the burden of pointer scanning in a
GC cycle. But generally, the B way is more efficient.
We could use an extra counter table (a slice) and let the map record indexes
to the table, to avoid making many allocations and creating many pointers,
as the following code shows:
var wordIndexes = make(map[string]int)

var wordCounters []int
func IncC(w []byte) {

if i, ok := wordIndexes[string(w)]; ok {
wordCounters[i]++
} else {
wordIndexes[string(w)] = len(wordCounters)
wordCounters = append(wordCounters, 1)
}
}
func Benchmark_C(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
IncC(key[:i])
}
}
}
Benchmark_A-4 11600 ns/op 2336 B/op 62 allocs/op

Benchmark_B-4 1543 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
Benchmark_C-4 1609 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
From a short-period view, the C way is as almost performant as the B way,
But as it uses much less pointers, it is actually more efficient than the B way
in a long-period view.
Please note that the above benchmark results show the latter two ways both
make zero allocations. This is actually not true. It is just that each of latter
two benchmark runs makes less than one allocation averagely, which is
truncated to zero. This is a deliberate design of the benchmark reports in the
standard packages.
Try to grow a map in one step

If we could predict the max number of entries will be put into a map at
coding time, we should create the map with the make function and pass the
max number as the size argument of the make call, to avoid growing the
map in multiple steps later.
Use index tables instead of maps which key types

have only a small set of possible values
Some programmers like to use a map with bool key to reduce verbose if-
else code block uses. For example, the following code
// Within a function ...

var condition bool
condition = evaluateCondition()
...
if condition {
counter++
} else {
counter--
}
...
if condition {
f()
} else {
g()
}
...
could be replaced with
// Package-level maps.
var boolToInt = map[bool]int{true: 1, false: 0}
var boolToFunc = map[bool]func(){true: f, false: g}
// Within a function ...

var condition bool
condition = evaluateCondition()
...
counter += boolToInt[condition]
...
boolToFunc[condition]()
...
If there are many such identical if-else blocks used in code, using maps
with bool keys will reduce many boilerplates and make code look much
cleaner. For most use cases, this is generally good. However, as of Go
toolchain v1.22.n, the map way is not very efficient from the code
execution performance view. The following benchmarks show the
performance differences.
package maps
import "testing"
//go:noiline
func f() {}
//go:noiline
func g() {}
func IfElse(x bool) func() {

if x {
return f
} else {
return g
}
}
var m = map[bool]func() {true: f, false: g}

func MapSwitch(x bool) func() {
return m[x]
}
func Benchmark_IfElse(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
IfElse(true)()
IfElse(false)()
}
}
func Benchmark_MapSwitch(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
MapSwitch(true)()
MapSwitch(false)()
}
}
Benchmark_IfElse-4 4.155 ns/op

Benchmark_MapSwitch-4 47.46 ns/op
From the benchmark results, we could get that the if-else block way is
much more performant than the map-switch way.
For the use cases which require high code performance, we can simulate a
bool-key map by using an index table to reduce if-else boilerplates, but
still keep the simplicity of the map switch way, with the help of a bool-to-
int function. The following benchmarks show how to use the index table
way.
func b2i(b bool) (r int) {

if b {
r = 1
}
return
}
var boolMap = [2]func(){g, f}
func Benchmark_BoolMap(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
boolMap[b2i(true)]()
boolMap[b2i(false)]()
}
}
From the above code, we could find that the uses of the index table way are
almost as clean as the map-switch way, though an extra tiny b2i function is
needed. And from the following benchmark results, we know that the index
table way is as performant as the if-else block way.
Benchmark_IfElse-4 4.155 ns/op

Benchmark_MapSwitch-4 47.46 ns/op
Benchmark_BoolMap-4 4.135 ns/op
Channels
Programming with channels is fun but channels are
not the most performant way for some use cases
The channel way might be fun to use, but it is be not the most efficient way
for some scenarios. In the current official standard Go compiler
implementation (version 1.22.n), channels are slower than the other
synchronization ways. This could be proved by the following benchmark
code.
package channels
import (
"sync"
"sync/atomic"
"testing"
)
var g int32
func Benchmark_NoSync(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
g++
}
}
func Benchmark_Atomic(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
atomic.AddInt32(&g, 1)
}
}
var m sync.Mutex
func Benchmark_Mutex(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
m.Lock()
g++
m.Unlock()
}
}
var ch = make(chan struct{}, 1)

func Benchmark_Channel(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
ch <- struct{}{}
g++
<-ch
}
}
Benchmark_NoSync-4 2.246 ns/op

Benchmark_Atomic-4 7.112 ns/op
Benchmark_Mutex-4 14.25 ns/op
Benchmark_Channel-4 61.44 ns/op
From the results, we could find that using channels to concurrently increase
a value is much slower that the other synchronization ways. The atomic
way is the best.
If it is possible, we should try to not share a value between multiple
goroutines, so that we don't need do synchronizations at all for the value.
Use one channel instead of several ones to avoid

using select blocks
For a select code block, the more case branches are in it, the more CPU
consuming the code block is. This could be proved by the following
benchmark code.
package channels
import "testing"
var ch1 = make(chan struct{}, 1)

var ch2 = make(chan struct{}, 1)
func Benchmark_Select_OneCase(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
select {
case ch1 <- struct{}{}:
<-ch1
}
}
}
func Benchmark_Select_TwoCases(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
select {
<-ch1
<-ch2
}
}
}
Benchmark_Select_OneCase-4 58.90 ns/op

Benchmark_Select_TwoCases-4 115.3 ns/op
So we should try to limit the number of case branches within a select code
block.
The official standard Go compiler treats a select code block with only one
case branch (and without default branch) as a simple general channel
operation.
For some cases, we could merge multiple channels as one, to avoid the
performance loss on executing multi-case select code blocks. We could
use an interface type or a struct type as the channel element type to achieve
this goal. If the channel element type is interface, then we can use a type
switch to distinguish message kinds. If the channel element type is struct,
then we can check which field is set to distinguish message kinds. The
following benchmark code shows the performance differences between
these ways.
package channels
import "testing"
var vx int
var vy string
func Benchmark_TwoChannels(b *testing.B) {

var x = make(chan int)
var y = make(chan string)
go func() { for {x <- 1} }()
go func() { for {y <- "hello"} }()
b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
select {
case vx = <-x:
case vy = <-y:
}
}
}
func Benchmark_OneChannel_Interface(b *testing.B) {

var x = make(chan interface{})
go func() { for {x <- 1} }()
go func() { for {x <- "hello"} }()
b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
select {
case v := <-x:
switch v := v.(type) {
case int: vx = v
case string: vy = v
}
}
}
}
func Benchmark_OneChannel_Struct(b *testing.B) {
type T struct { x int; y string }
var x = make(chan T)
go func() { for {x <- T{x: 1}} }()
go func() { for {x <- T{y: "hello"}} }()
b.ResetTimer()
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
v := <-x
if v.y != "" {
vy = v.y
} else {
vx = v.x
}
}
}
Benchmark_TwoChannels-4 1295 ns/op

Benchmark_OneChannel_Interface-4 940.9 ns/op
Benchmark_OneChannel_Struct-4 851.0 ns/op
From the results, we could get that two-case select code blocks are slower
than one-case select code blocks. In other words, for some cases, merging
several channels into one is a good way to improve program performance.
Try-send and try-receive select code blocks are

specially optimized
A try-send or try-receive select code block contains one default branch
and exact one case branch. Such code blocks are specially optimized by
the official standard Go compiler, so their executions are very fast. This
could be proved by the following benchmark code:
package channels
import "testing"
var c = make(chan struct{})
func Benchmark_TryReceive(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
select {
case <-c:
default:
}
}
}
func Benchmark_TrySend(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
select {
case c <- struct{}{}:
default:
}
}
}
Benchmark_TryReceive-4 5.646 ns/op

Benchmark_TrySend-4 5.293 ns/op
From the above results and the results shown in the first section of the
current chapter, we could get that a try-send or try-receive code block is
much less CPU consuming than a normal channel receive or send channel
operation.
Functions
Function inlining
The official standard Go compiler will automatically inline some small
functions to improve code execution speed.
Let's look at an example:
// inline.go
package inline
func bar(a, b int) int {

return a*a - b*b + 2 * (a - b)
}
func foo(x, y int) int {

var a = bar(x, y)
var b = bar(y, x)
var c = bar(a, b)
var d = bar(b, a)
return c*c + d*d
}
Build it with single -m compiler option:
$ go build -gcflags="-m" inline.go

./inline.go:4:6: can inline bar
./inline.go:9:13: inlining call to bar
From the output, we know that the compiler thinks the bar function is
inline-able, so the bar function calls within the foo function will be
automatically flattened as:
func foo(x, y int) int {

var a = x*y - y*y + 2 * (x - y)
var b = y*y - x*x + 2 * (y - x)
var c = a*a - b*b + 2 * (a - b)
var d = b*b - a*a + 2 * (b - a)
return c*c + d*d
}
After the flattening, some stack operations originally happening when

calling the bar functions are saved so that code execution performance gets
improved.
Inlining will make generated Go binaries larger, so compilers only inline

calls to small functions.
Which functions are inline-able?
How small for a function is enough to be capable of being inlined? Each

statement within a function has an inline cost. If the sum inline cost of all
the statements within a function doesn't exceed the threshold set by the
compiler, then the compiler thinks calls to the function could be inlined.
We can use double -m compiler option to show why some functions are
inline-able but others aren't. Still use the above example:
$ go build -gcflags="-m -m" inline.go
./inline.go:4:6: can inline bar with cost 14 as: ...
./inline.go:8:6: cannot inline foo: ... cost 96 exceeds budget
80
...
From the output, we could learn that the foo function is not inline-able, for
its inline cost is 96, which exceeds the inline threshold (80, without
enabling profile-guided optimization).
Recursive functions will never get inlined. For example, the sumSquares
function shown in the following code is not inline-able.
package main
func sumSquares(n uint) uint {

if n == 0 {
return 0
}
return sumSquares(n-1) + n*n
}
func main() {
println(sumSquares(5))
}
Besides the above rules, for various reasons, currently (v1.22.n), the official
standard Go compiler never inlines functions containing:
built-in recover function calls

defer calls
go calls
For example, in the following code, the official standard Go compiler

(v1.22.n) thinks all of the fN functions are inline-able but none of the gN
functions are.
func f1(s []int) int {

return cap(s) - len(s)
}
func g1(s []int) int {

recover()
return cap(s) - len(s)
}
func f2(b bool) string {

if b {
return "y"
}
return "N"
}
func f3(c chan int) int {

return <-c
}
func f4(a, b int) int {

return a*a - b*b
}
func g4(a, b int) int {

defer func(){}()
return a*a - b*b
}
func f5(a, b int) int {

return a*a - b*b
}
func g5(a, b int) int {

go func(){}()
return a*a - b*b
}
The official standard Go compiler might change inline strategies, the inline
cost threshold and statement inline costs from version to version. For
example, in the above example, * before v1.16, the compiler thought the
function g6 in the following code was not inline-able (but since v1.16, it
has become inline-able). * before v1.18, the compiler thought the function
g7 in the following code was not inline-able (but since v1.18, it has become
inline-able). * before v1.19, the compiler thought the function g3 in the
following code was not inline-able (but since v1.19, it has become inline-
able). * before v1.20, the compiler thought the function g2 in the following
code was not inline-able (but since v1.20, it has become inline-able).
func g6(s []int) {

for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
s[i] = i
}
}
func g7(s []int) {

for i := range s {
s[i] = i
}
}
func g3(c chan int) int {

select {
case r := <-c:
return r
}
}
func g2(b bool) string {

type _ int
if b {
return "y"
}
return "N"
}
As another example, the plusSquare function shown in the following code

in inline-able only since Go v1.17. Before v1.17, a function containing
closures was thought as not inline-able.
package main
func plusSquare(n int) int {

f := func(x int) int { return x*x }
return f(n) + 2*n + 1
}
func main() {
println(plusSquare(5))
}
A call to a function value is not inline-able if the value is hard

to be determined at compile time
For example, in the following code, the call to the package-level addFunc
function variable is not inline-able, because the compiler doesn't confirm
the values of package-level variables at compile time (for compilation
speed consideration). However, it does try to confirm the values of local
variables at compile time, if it is possible. So the call to local addFunc
function (variable) will get inlined.
package main
func add(a, b int) int {

return a + b
}
var addFunc = add

func main() {
println(addFunc(11, 22)) // not inlined
var addFunc = add
println(addFunc(11, 22)) // inlined
}
The go:noinline comment directive
Sometimes, we might want calls to a function to never get inlined, for study
and testing purposes, or to make a caller function of the function inline-able
(see below for an example), etc. Besides the several ways introduced above,
we could also use the go:noinline comment directive to achieve this goal.
For example, the compiler will not inline the call to the add function in the
following code, even if the add function is very simple.
package main
//go:noinline
func add(x, y int) int {
return x + y
}
func main() {
println(add(1, 2))
}
However, please note that this is not a formal way to avoid inlining. It is
mainly intended to be used in standard package and Go toolchain
developments. But personally, I think this directive will be supported in a
long term.
Write code in the ways which are less inline costly
Generally, we should try to make more functions inline-able, to get better

program execution performances.
Besides the rules introduce above, we should know that different code
implementation ways might have different inline costs, even if the code
differences are subtle. We could make use of this fact to try different
implementation ways to find out which way has the lowest inline cost.
Let's use the first example shown above again.
// inline2.go
package inline
func bar(a, b int) int {

return a*a - b*b + 2 * (a - b)
}
func foo(x, y int) int { // line 8

var a = bar(x, y)
var b = bar(y, x)
var c = bar(a, b)
var d = bar(b, a)
return c*c + d*d
}
func foo2(x, y int) int { // line 16

var a = x*y - y*y + 2 * (x - y)
var b = y*y - x*x + 2 * (y - x)
var c = a*a - b*b + 2 * (a - b)
var d = b*b - a*a + 2 * (b - a)
return c*c + d*d
}
Build it with double -m options:
$ go build -gcflags="-m -m" inline2.go

...
./inline2.go:8:6: cannot inline foo: function too complex: cost
96 exceeds budget 80
...
./inline2.go:16:6: can inline foo2 with cost 76 as: ...
From the outputs, we could learn that although the compiler thinks the foo
function is not inline-able, but it thinks its manual-flattened version (the
foo2 function) is inline-able, because the inline cost of the foo2 function
calculated by the compiler is 76, which doesn't exceed the inline threshold
(80). Yes, manual-inlining is often less costly than compiler auto-inlining.
And, in practice, manual inlined code is indeed often comparatively more
performant (see below for an example).
Another example:
// sum.go
package inline
func sum1(s []int) int { // line 4

var r = 0
for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
r += s[i]
}
return r
}
func sum2(s []int) (r int) { // line 12

for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
r += s[i]
}
return r
}
func sum3(s []int) (r int) { // line 19

for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
r += s[i]
}
return
}
The compiler (v1.22.n) thinks the inline costs of the sumN functions are
different, which could be verified from the following outputs:
$ go build -gcflags="-m -m" sum.go

./sum.go:4:6: can inline sum1 with cost 25 as: ...
...
The calculated inline costs of the three functions are 25, 20 and 19,
respectively. From the above example, we could get:
local variable declarations contributes to inline costs.

bare return statements are less inline costly than non-bare return
statements.
(Please note that code inline costs don't mean code execution costs. In fact,
the official standard Go compiler generate identical assembly instructions
for the above sumN functions.)
Note, since v1.18, the official standard Go compiler thinks the inline cost of
for-range loop is smaller than a plain for loop. For example, the
compiler thinks the inline cost of the following sum4 function is 11, which
is much smaller than the above plain for loops.
func sum4(s []int) (r int) {
for i := range s {
r += s[i]
}
return
}
The third example:
// branches.go
package inline
func foo(a, b, c, d bool) int { // line 4

if a { return 0 }
if b { return 0 }
if c { return 0 }
if d { return 0 }
return 1
}
func foo2(a, b, c, d bool) (r int) { // line 12

if a { return }
if b { return }
if c { return }
if d { return }
return 1
}
func bar(a, b, c, d bool) int { // line 20

if a || b || c || d {
return 0
}
return 1
}
func bar2(a, b, c, d bool) (r int) { // line 27

if a || b || c || d {
return
}
return 1
}
The following outputs show less branches lead to lower inline costs.
$ go build -gcflags="-m -m" branches.go

./branches.go:4:6: can inline foo with cost 18 as: ...
./branches.go:12:6: can inline foo2 with cost 14 as: ...
./branches.go:20:6: can inline bar with cost 12 as: ...
./branches.go:27:6: can inline bar2 with cost 11 as: ...
The 4th example:
// funcvalue.go
package inline
func add(x, y int) int {

return x+y
}
func sub(x, y int) int {

return x-y
}
func op1(op string, a, b int) int { // line 12

switch op {
default: panic("unknown op " + op)
case "+": return add(a, b) // inlining call to add
case "-": return sub(a, b) // inlining call to sub
}
}
func op2(op string, a, b int) int { // line 20

var f func(int, int) int
switch op {
default: panic("unknown op " + op)
case "+": f = add
case "-": f = sub
}
return f(a, b)
}
The following outputs show the inline cost of the function op2 is much
higher than the function op1 :
$ go build -gcflags="-m -m" funcvalue.go

...
./aaa.go:12:6: can inline op1 with cost 30 as: ...
...
./aaa.go:20:6: cannot inline op2: ...: cost 84 exceeds budget
80
...
The official standard Go compiler might be improved in future versions so

that the calculated costs in the examples shown in this section will become
more consistent.
Make hot paths inline-able

If a function is not inline-able but contains a starting hot path, to make the
hot path inline-able, we could wrap the cold parth part into another
function.
For example, the concat function in the following code is not inline-able,
for its inline cost is 85 (larger than the threshold 80).
func concat(bss ...[]byte) []byte {

n := len(bss)
if n == 0 {
return nil
} else if n == 1 {
return bss[0]
} else if n == 2 {
return append(bss[0], bss[1]...)
}
var m = 0
for i := 0; i < len(bss); i++ {
m += len(bss[i])
}
var r = make([]byte, 0, m)
for i := 0; i < len(bss); i++ {
r = append(r, bss[i]...)
}
return r
}
If, in practice, most cases are concatenating two byte slices, then we could
rewrite the above code as the following shown. Now the inline cost of the
concat function becomes 74 so that it is inline-able now. That means the
hot path will be always inlined.
func concat(bss ...[]byte) []byte {

if len(bss) == 2 {
return append(bss[0], bss[1]...)
}
return concatSlow(bss...)
}
//go:noinline
func concatSlow(bss ...[]byte) []byte {
if len(bss) == 0 {
return nil
} else if len(bss) == 1 {
return bss[0]
}
var m = 0
for i := 0; i < len(bss); i++ {
m += len(bss[i])
}
var r = make([]byte, 0, m)
for i := 0; i < len(bss); i++ {
r = append(r, bss[i]...)
}
return r
}
If the inline cost of the function wrapping the code path part doesn't exceed
the inline threshold, then we should use the above introduced avoid-being-
inlined ways to prevent the function from being inline-able. Otherwise, the
rewritten concat function is still not inline-able, for the wrapped part be
automatically flattened into the rewritten function. That is why the
go:noinline comment directive is put before the rewritten concatSlow
function.
Please note that, currently (Go toolchain v1.22.n), the inline cost of a non-
inlined function call is 59. That means a function is not inline-able if it
contains 2+ non-inlined calls.
And please note that, since Go toolchain v1.18, if we replace the two plain
for loops within the original concat function with two for-range loops,
then the original function will become inline-able already. Here, for demo
purpose, we use two plain for loops.
Manual inlining is often more performance than auto-inlining
An example:
package functions
import "testing"
const N = 100
// This function is inline-able.

func Slice2Array(b []byte) [N]byte {
return *(*[N]byte)(b)
}
//====================
var buf = make([]byte, 8192)

var r [128][N]byte
func Benchmark_ManualInline(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = *(*[N]byte)(buf)
}
}
func Benchmark_AutoInline(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = Slice2Array(buf) // inlined
}
}
Benchmark_ManualInline-4 5.134 ns/op

Benchmark_AutoInline-4 11.49 ns/op
From the results, we could find that manual-inlining is more performance

than auto-inlining, at least for this specified case.
The official standard Go compiler might be improved in future versions so

that automatic inlining will become more smart.
Inlining might do negative impact on performance
For some compiler implementation flaws, sometimes, inlined calls might

perform worse than not-inlined ones. Here is an example:
package functions
import "testing"
type T [1<<8]byte
var r, s T
//go:noinline
func not_inline_able(x1, y1 *T) {
x, y := x1[:], y1[:]
for k := 0; k < len(T{}); k++ {
x[k] = y[k]
}
}
func inline_able(x1, y1 *T) {

x, y := x1[:], y1[:]
for k := 0; k < len(T{}); k++ {
x[k] = y[k]
}
}
func Benchmark_not_inlined(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
not_inline_able(&r, &s)
}
}
func Benchmark_auto_inlined(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
inline_able(&r, &s)
}
}
func Benchmark_manual_inlined(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
for k := 0; k < len(T{}); k++ {
r[k] = s[k]
}
}
}
Benchmark_not_inlined-4 127.9 ns/op

Benchmark_auto_inlined-4 196.4 ns/op
Benchmark_manual_inlined-4 196.4 ns/op
The implementation flaw (in the official standard Go compiler v1.22.n)

presents when the manipulated values are global (package-level) arrays.
Future official standard compiler versions might fix the flaw.
Pointer parameters/results vs. non-pointer

parameters/results
Arguments and return values of functions calls are passed by copy in Go.
So using large-size types as the parameter/result types of a function causes
large value copy costs when invoking calls to the function.
Large parameter/result types also increase the possibility of stack growing.

To avoid the high argument copy costs caused by a large-size parameter
type T , we could use the pointer type *T as the parameter type instead.
However, please note that pointer parameters/results have their own
drawbacks. For some scenarios, they might cause more heap allocations.
The following code shows the effect of value copy costs.
package functions
import "testing"
type T5 struct{a, b, c, d, e float32}

var t5 T5
//go:noinline
func Add5_TT_T(x, y T5) (z T5) {
z.a = x.a + y.a
z.b = x.b + y.b
z.c = x.c + y.c
z.d = x.d + y.d
z.e = x.e + y.e
return
}
//go:noinline
func Add5_PPP(z, x, y *T5) {
z.a = x.a + y.a
z.b = x.b + y.b
z.c = x.c + y.c
z.d = x.d + y.d
z.e = x.e + y.e
}
func Benchmark_Add5_TT_T(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
var x, y, z T5
z = Add5_TT_T(x, y)
t5 = z
}
}
func Benchmark_Add5_PPP(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
var x, y, z T5
Add5_PPP(&z, &x, &y)
t5 = z
}
}
Benchmark_Add5_TT_T-4 17.73 ns/op

Benchmark_Add5_PPP-4 11.95 ns/op
From the above results, we get that the function Add5_PPP is more efficient
than the function Add5_TT_T .
For small-size types, the benchmarks results will invert. The reason is the
official standard Go compiler specially optimizes some operations on small-
size values.
package functions
import "testing"
type T4 struct{a, b, c, d float32}
var t4 T4
//go:noinline
func Add4_TT_T(x, y T4) (z T4) {
z.a = x.a + y.a
z.b = x.b + y.b
z.c = x.c + y.c
z.d = x.d + y.d
return
}
//go:noinline
func Add4_PPP(z, x, y *T4) {
z.a = x.a + y.a
z.b = x.b + y.b
z.c = x.c + y.c
z.d = x.d + y.d
}
func Benchmark_Add4_TT_T(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
var x, y, z T4
z = Add4_TT_T(x, y)
t4 = z
}
}
func Benchmark_Add4_PPP(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
var x, y, z T4
Add4_PPP(&z, &x, &y)
t4 = z
}
}
The new benchmark results:
Benchmark_Add4_TT_T-4 2.716 ns/op

Benchmark_Add4_PPP-4 9.006 ns/op
Named results vs. anonymous results

It is often said that generally named results make function more performant.
This is true for many cases, but not for some ones. For example, in the
following two ConvertToArray implementations, the one with a named
result is slower than the one with an anonymous result.
package functions
import "testing"
const N = 1<<12
var buf = make([]byte, N)
var r [128][N]byte
func Benchmark_ConvertToArray_Named(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = ConvertToArray_Named(buf)
}
}
func Benchmark_ConvertToArray_Unnamed(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = ConvertToArray_Unnamed(buf)
}
}
func ConvertToArray_Named(b []byte) (ret [N]byte) {

// if b == nil {defer print() }
ret = *(*[N]byte)(b)
return
}
func ConvertToArray_Unnamed(b []byte) [N]byte {

return *(*[N]byte)(b)
}
The benchmark result:
Benchmark_ConvertToArray_Named-4 472.2 ns/op

Benchmark_ConvertToArray_Unnamed-4 332.9 ns/op
From the results, we could find that the function with a named result
performs slower. It looks this is a problem related to code inlining. If the
two if b == nil {...} lines are enabled (to prevent the calls to the two
functions from being inlined), then there is no performance difference
between the two functions. The future compiler versions might remove the
performance difference when the two functions are both inline-able.
The following two CopyToArray implementations shows the opposite

result. the one with anonymous results is slower than the one with named
results, whether or not the two functions are inlined.
package functions
import "testing"
const N = 1<<12
var buf = make([]byte, N)
var r [128][N]byte
func Benchmark_CopyToArray_Named(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = CopyToArray_Named(buf)
}
}
func Benchmark_CopyToArray_Unnamed(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r[i&127] = CopyToArray_Unnamed(buf)
}
}
func CopyToArray_Named(b []byte) (ret [N]byte) {

copy(ret[:], b)
return
}
func CopyToArray_Unnamed(b []byte) [N]byte {

var ret [N]byte
copy(ret[:], b)
return ret
}
Benchmark_CopyToArray_Named-4 408.3 ns/op

Benchmark_CopyToArray_Unnamed-4 547.5 ns/op
Try to store intermediate calculation results in local

variables with sizes not larger than a native word
Storing intermediate calculation results in local variables no larger than a
native word can significantly improve performance due to their higher
chance of being allocated to registers.
An example:
package functions
import "testing"
var sum int
func f(s []int) {

sum += v
}
}
func g(s []int) {

var n = 0
n += v
}
sum = n
}
func h(s []int) {

var n [2]int
n[0] += v
}
sum = n[0]
}

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
f(s)
}
}

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
g(s)
}
}
func Benchmark_h(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
h(s)
}
}

Benchmark_h-4 2730 ns/op
Avoid using deferred calls in loops

Since v1.14, the official standard Go compiler has specially optimized
open-ended deferred calls (the deferred calls which are not within loops).
But the costs of deferred calls within loops are still high. This could be
proved from the following example.
package functions
import "testing"
var n int
func inc() {
n++
}
func f(n int) {

for i := 0; i < n; i++ {
defer inc()
inc()
}
}
func g(n int) {

for i := 0; i < n; i++ {
func() {
defer inc()
inc()
}()
}
}

n = 0
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
f(100)
}
}

n = 0
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
g(100)
}
}
Benchmark_f-4 33232 ns/op 2 B/op 0 allocs/op

Benchmark_g-4 5237 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
The reason why the function g is much more performant than the function
f is that deferred calls which are not directly in loops are specially
optimized by the official standard Go compiler. The function g wraps the
code in the loop into an anonymous function call so that the deferred call is
not directly enclosed in the loop.
Please note that, the two functions are not equivalent to each other in logic.
If this is a problem, then the anonymous function call trick should not be
used.
Avoid using deferred calls if extreme high

performance is demanded
Even if the official standard Go compiler has specially optimized open-
ended deferred calls, such a deferred call still has a small extra overhead
comparing non-deferred calls. And as above mentioned, currently (Go
toolchain v1.22.n), a function containing deferred calls is not inline-able. So
please try to avoid using deferred calls in a piece of code if extreme high
performance is demanded for the piece of code.
The arguments of a function call will be always

evaluated when the call is invoked
For example, the following program prints 1 , which means the string
concatenation expression h + w is evaluated, even if the parameter s is
actually not used in the debugPrint function at run time.
package main
import (
"log"
"testing"
)
var debugOn = false
func debugPrint(s string) {

if debugOn {
log.Println(s)
}
}
func main() {
return int(allocs)
}
var h, w = "hello ", "world!"
var n = stat(func(){
debugPrint(h + w)
})
println(n) // 1
}
One way to avoid the unnecessary argument evaluation is to change the

debugOn value to a constant. But some programs might need to change the
value on the fly, so this way is not always feasible. We could let the
debugPrint function return a bool result and call the function in a
boolean-and operation, like the following code shows:
package main
import (
"log"
"testing"
)
var debugOn = false
func debugPrint(s string) bool {

log.Println(s)
return true // or false
}
func main() {
return int(allocs)
}
var h, w = "hello ", "world!"
_ = debugOn && debugPrint(h + w)
})
println(n) // 0
}
In the above code, the string concatenation expression h + w is not

evaluated, because the debugPrint function call is not invoked at all.
Try to make less values escape to heap in the hot

paths
Assume most calls to the function f shown in the following code return
from the if code block (most arguments are in the range [0, 9] ), then the
implementation of the function f is not very efficient, because the argument
x will escape to heap.
package main
import "strconv"
func f(x int) string { // x escapes to heap

if x >= 0 && x < 10 {
return "0123456789"[x:x+1]
}
return g(&x)
}
func g(x *int) string {

escape(x) // for demo purpose
return strconv.Itoa(*x)
}
//go:noinline
sink = x
sink = nil
}
func main() {
var a = f(100)
println(a)
}
By making use of the trick introduced in the stack and escape analysis
article, we could rewrite the function f as the following shows, to prevent
the argument x from escaping to heap.
func f(x int) string {

if x >= 0 && x < 10 {
return "0123456789"[x:x+1]
}
x2 := x // x2 escapes to heap
return g(&x2)
}
Interfaces
Box values into and unbox values from interfaces
An interface value could be viewed as a box to hold at most one non-
interface value. A nil interface value holds nothing. On the contrary, a type
assertion could be viewed as a value unboxing operation.
When a non-interface value is assigned to an interface value, generally, a

copy of the non-interface value will be boxed in the interface value. In the
official standard Go compiler implementation, generally, the copy of the
non-interface value is allocated somewhere and its address is stored in the
interface value.
So generally, the cost of boxing a value is approximately proportional to the

size of the value.
package interfaces
import "testing"
var r interface{}
var n16 int16 = 12345

func Benchmark_BoxInt16(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = n16 }
}
var n32 int32 = 12345

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = n32 }
}
var n64 int64 = 12345

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = n64 }
}
var f64 float64 = 1.2345

func Benchmark_BoxFloat64(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = f64 }
}
var s = "Go"
func Benchmark_BoxString(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = s }
}
var x = []int{1, 2, 3}
func Benchmark_BoxSlice(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = x }
}
var a = [100]int{}
func Benchmark_BoxArray(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = a }
}
Benchmark_BoxInt16-4 16.62 ns/op 2 B/op 1 allocs/op

Benchmark_BoxFloat64-4 20.05 ns/op 8 B/op 1 allocs/op
Benchmark_BoxString-4 56.57 ns/op 16 B/op 1 allocs/op
Benchmark_BoxSlice-4 48.89 ns/op 24 B/op 1 allocs/op
Benchmark_BoxArray-4 247.2 ns/op 896 B/op 1 allocs/op
From the above benchmark results, we could get that each value boxing
operation generally needs one allocation, and the size of the allocated
memory block is the same as the size of the boxed value.
The official standard Go compiler makes some optimizations so that the

general rule mentioned above is not always obeyed. One optimization made
by the official standard Go compiler is that no allocations are made when
boxing zero-size values, boolean values and 8-bit integer values.
package interfaces
import "testing"
var r interface{}
var v0 struct{}
func Benchmark_BoxZeroSize1(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = v0 }
}
var a0 [0]int64
func Benchmark_BoxZeroSize2(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = a0 }
}
var b bool
func Benchmark_BoxBool(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = b }
}
var n int8 = -100

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = n }
}
Benchmark_BoxZeroSize1-4 1.133 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op

Benchmark_BoxZeroSize2-4 1.180 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
Benchmark_BoxBool-4 1.180 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
From the results, we could get that boxing zero-size values, boolean values
and 8-bit integer values doesn't make memory allocations, which is one
reason why such boxing operations are much faster.
Another optimization made by the official standard Go compiler is that no

allocations are made when boxing pointer values into interfaces. Thus,
boxing pointer values is often much faster than boxing non-pointer values.
The official standard Go compiler represents (the direct parts of) maps,
channels and functions as pointers internally, so boxing such values is also
as faster as boxing pointers.
This could be proved from the following code:
package interfaces
import "testing"
var r interface{}
var p = new([100]int)
func Benchmark_BoxPointer(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = p }
}
var m = map[string]int{"Go": 2009}

func Benchmark_BoxMap(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = m }
}
var c = make(chan int, 100)

func Benchmark_BoxChannel(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = c }
}
var f = func(a, b int) int {return a + b}

func Benchmark_BoxFunction(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = f }
}
Benchmark_BoxPointer-4 1.192 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op

Benchmark_BoxMap-4 1.182 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
Benchmark_BoxChannel-4 1.216 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
Benchmark_BoxFunction-4 1.126 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
From the above results, we could get that boxing pointer values is very fast
and doesn't make memory allocations. This explains the reason why
declaring a method for *T is often more efficient than for T if we intend to
let the method implement an interface method.
By making use of this optimization, for some use cases, we could use a
loop-up table to convert some non-pointer values in a small set into pointer
values. For example, in the following code, we use an array to convert
uint16 values into pointers to get much lower value boxing costs.
package interfaces
import "testing"
var values [65536]uint16
func init() {
for i := range values {
values[i] = uint16(i)
}
}
var r interface{}
func Benchmark_Box_Normal(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = uint16(i)
}
}
func Benchmark_Box_Lookup(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = &values[uint16(i)]
}
}
var x interface{} = uint16(10000)byte

var n uint16
func Benchmark_Unbox_Normal(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
n = x.(uint16)
}
}
func Benchmark_Unbox_Lookup(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
n = *y.(*uint16)
}
}
Benchmark_Box_Normal-4 22.69 ns/op 1 B/op 0 allocs/op

Benchmark_Box_Lookup-4 1.137 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
Benchmark_Unbox_Normal-4 0.7535 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
Benchmark_Unbox_Lookup-4 0.7510 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
(Please note that, the results show the Box_Normal function makes zero
allocations, which is not true. The value is about 0.99 , which is truncated
to zero. The reason is boxing values within [0, 255] doesn't allocate,
which will be mentioned below.)
The same optimization is also applied for boxing constant values:

package interfaces
import "testing"
var r interface{}
const N int64 = 12345

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = N }
}
const F float64 = 1.2345

func Benchmark_BoxFloat64(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = F }
}
const S = "Go"
func Benchmark_BoxConstString(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = S }
}

Benchmark_BoxFloat64-4 1.196 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
Benchmark_BoxConstString-4 1.211 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
In fact, the official standard Go compiler also makes similar optimizations

for boxing the following values:
non-constant small integer values (in range [0, 255] ) of any integer
types (expect for 8-bit ones, which have been covered in the first
optimization mentioned above).
non-constant zero values of floating-point/string/slice types.
Box non-constant small integer values:
package interfaces
import "testing"
var r interface{}
func Benchmark_BoxSmallInt16(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = int16(i&255) }
}

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = int32(i&255) }
}

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = int64(i&255) }
}
Benchmark_BoxSmallInt16-4 3.409 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op

Box zero floating-point, string and slices values:
package interfaces
import "testing"
var r interface{}
var f32 float32 = 0

func Benchmark_BoxZeroFloat32(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = f32 }
}
var f64 float64 = 0

func Benchmark_BoxZeroFloat64(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = f64 }
}
var str = ""

func Benchmark_BoxBlankString(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ { r = str }
}
var slc []int

func Benchmark_BoxNilSlice(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = slc
}
}
Benchmark_BoxZeroFloat32-4 3.386 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op

Benchmark_BoxZeroFloat64-4 3.385 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
Benchmark_BoxBlankString-4 3.427 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
Benchmark_BoxNilSlice-4 3.930 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
The cost of boxing a struct (array) value with only one field (element)
which is a small integer or a zero
bool/numeric/string/slice/pointer/map/channel/function value is the same as
boxing that field (element) (before Go toolchain v1.19, except the only
field/element is a 8-bit integer).
package interfaces
import "testing"
var r interface{}
func Benchmark_SmallInt32Field(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = struct{ n int32 }{255}
}
}
func Benchmark_ZeroFloat64Element(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = [1]float64{0}
}
}
func Benchmark_BlankStringField(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = struct{ n string }{""}
}
}
func Benchmark_NilSliceField(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = struct{ n []int }{nil}
}
}
func Benchmark_NilFunctionElement(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r = [1]func(){func(){}}
}
}
Benchmark results:
Benchmark_SmallInt32Field-4 3.387 ns/op 0 B/op 0

allocs/op
Benchmark_ZeroFloat64Element-4 3.884 ns/op 0 B/op 0
allocs/op
Benchmark_BlankStringField-4 3.528 ns/op 0 B/op 0
allocs/op
Benchmark_NilSliceField-4 3.931 ns/op 0 B/op 0
allocs/op
Benchmark_NilFunctionElement-4 1.134 ns/op 0 B/op 0
allocs/op
A summary based on the above benchmark results (as of Go toolchain

v1.22.n):
Boxing pointer values is much faster than boxing non-pointer values.

Boxing maps, channels and functions is as fast as boxing pointers.
Boxing constant values is as fast as boxing pointers.
Boxing zero-size values is as fast as boxing pointers.
Boxing boolean and 8-bit integer values is as fast as boxing pointers.
Boxing non-constant small values (in range [0, 255] ) of any integer
types (expect for 8-bit ones) is about 3 times slower than boxing a
pointer value.
Boxing floating-point/string/slice zero values is about 3 times slower
than boxing a pointer value.
Boxing a non-constant not-small integer value (out of range [0,
255] ) or a non-zero floating-point value is about (or more than) 20
times slower than boxing a pointer value.
Boxing non-nil slices or non-blank non-constant string values is about
(or more than) 50 times slower than boxing a pointer values.
Boxing a struct (array) value with only one field (element) which is a
small integer or a zero bool/numeric/string/slice/point value is as faster
as boxing that field (element).
So, if value boxing operations are made frequently on the hot paths of code
execution, it is recommended to box values with small boxing costs.
Try to void memory allocations by assigning

interface to interface
Sometimes, we need to box a non-interface value in two interface values.
There are two ways to achieve the goal:
1. box the non-interface value in the first interface value then box the
non-interface value in the second one.
2. box the non-interface value in the first interface value then assign the
first interface to the second one.
If boxing the value needs an allocation, then which way is more
performant? No doubly, the second way, which could be proved by the
following benchmark code.
package main
import "testing"
var v = 9999999
var x, y interface{}
func Benchmark_BoxBox(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
x = v // needs one allocation
y = v // needs one allocation
}
}
func Benchmark_BoxAssign(b *testing.B) {

for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
x = v // needs one allocation
y = x // no allocations
}
}
Benchmark_BoxBox-4 130.5 ns/op 16 B/op 2 allocs/op

Benchmark_BoxAssign-4 68.31 ns/op 8 B/op 1 allocs/op
The second way saves one allocation so it is more performant.

In practice, the tip could be used when the same (non-interface) value is
passed to print functions (which parameters are mostly of type
interface{} ) provided in the fmt standard package as multiple arguments.
For example, in the following code, the second fmt.Fprint call in the
following code is more performant than the first one, because it saves two
allocations.
package main
import (
"fmt"
"io"
"testing"
)
func main() {
return int(allocs)
}
var x = "aaa"
// 3 allocations
fmt.Fprint(io.Discard, x, x, x)
})
println(n) // 3
var m = stat(func(){
var i interface{} = x // 1 allocation
// No allocations
fmt.Fprint(io.Discard, i, i, i)
})
println(m) // 1
}
Calling interface methods needs a little extra cost

Calling an interface method needs to look up a virtual table to find the
called concrete method. And, calling a concrete method through an
interface value prevents the method from being inlined.
package interfaces
import "testing"
type BinaryOp interface {

Do(x, y float64) float64
}
type Add struct {}
func (a Add) Do(x, y float64) float64 {

return x+y
}
//go:noinline
func (a Add) Do_NotInlined(x, y float64) float64 {
return x+y
}
var x1, y1, r1 float64

var add Add
func Benchmark_Add_Inline(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r1 = add.Do(x1, y1)
}
}

var add_NotInlined Add
func Benchmark_Add_NotInlined(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r2 = add.Do_NotInlined(x2, y2)
}
}

var add_Interface BinaryOp = Add{}
func Benchmark_Add_Interface(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
r3 = add_Interface.Do(x3, y3)
}
}
Benchmark_Add_Inline-4 0.6254 ns/op

Benchmark_Add_NotInlined-4 2.340 ns/op
Benchmark_Add_Interface-4 4.935 ns/op
From the benchmark results, we could get the cost of virtual table looking-
up is about 2.5ns, and (for this specified case) the performance loss caused
by not inlined is about 1.7 ns. The losses are small for most cases, but might
be non-ignorable if the code runs frequently on the hot execution paths.
This has been mentioned in the stacks and escape analysis chapter.
However, no need to be too resistant to interface methods. For most cases, a

clean design is more important than a bit better performance. And the
official standard Go compiler is able to de-virtualize some interface method
calls at compile time.
Avoid using interface parameters and results in

small functions which are called frequently
Because most value boxing operations need memory allocations, we should
try to avoid declaring small functions (including methods) with interface
parameters and results if the functions are called massively and frequently
in code execution.
For example, in the standard image package, there are many At(x, y int)
color.Color and Set(x, y int, c color.Color) methods, which are
declared to implement the image/draw.Image interface. The type
color.Color is an interface type:
type Color interface {

RGBA() (r, g, b, a uint32)
}
Calling these At and Set methods causes short-lived memory allocations

(for boxing non-interface values) and calling the Color.RGBA interface
method consumes a bit extra CPU resources (for looking up a virtual table
and not inline-able). These methods are very likely called massively in
image processing applications, which leads to a very bad code execution
efficiency. To alleviate the problem, Go 1.17 introduced a new interface
type, image/draw.RGBA64Image :
type RGBA64Image interface {

image.Image
RGBA64At(x, y int) color.RGBA64
SetRGBA64(x, y int, c color.RGBA64)
}
The new added method RGBA64At returns a non-interface type

color.RGBA64 , and the new added method SetRGBA64 accepts a
color.RGBA64 argument.
type RGBA64 struct {

R, G, B, A uint16
}
By using the RGBA64At and SetRGBA64 methods, many memory allocations

and CPU resources are saved, so that code execution efficiency is improved
much.

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Acknowledgments

Firstly, thanks to the entire Go community. An active and responsive

Specially, I want to give thanks to the following people who helped me

Thanks to Olexandr Shalakhin for the permission to use one of the

Life is full of trade-offs, and so is the programming world. In programming,

In real-world projects, most code sections don't demand peak performance.

The contents in this book include:

how to consume less CPU resources.

go version go1.22.1 linux/amd64

Some benchmark times information is removed from benchmark results, to

Please note that:

About the author

It is also welcome to send your feedback to the Go 101 twitter account:

In the official standard Go compiler implementation, each value of the

In the official standard Go compiler implementation, the sizes of all values

In the official standard Go compiler implementation, the sizes of all types

In the official standard Go compiler implementation, map values, channel

In the official standard Go compiler implementation,

Type Kinds Value Size Required by Go Specification

Struct padding will be explained in the section after next.

For a type T , we can call unsafe.Alignof(t) to get its general alignment

type alignment guarantee

The Go specification says:

For a variable x of a struct type: unsafe.Alignof(x) is the largest of

For a variable x of an array type: unsafe.Alignof(x) is the same as

The official standard Go compiler ensures that the size of a type is a

The reason why its size is 24:

We can use the unsafe.Sizeof function to get value/type sizes. For

We can view the padding bytes as a form of memory wasting, a trade-off

In practice, generally, we should make related fields adjacent to get good

Value copy costs and small-size types/values

To achieve high code execution performance, if it is possible, we should try

copying a large quantity of large-size values in a loop.

Some types in Go belong to small-size types. Copying their values is

var a9r [N][9]Element

var a10r [N][10]Element

type S9 struct{ a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i Element }

type S10 struct{ a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j Element }

The benchmark results:

Benchmark_CopyArray_9_elements-4 3974 ns/op

type T4 struct{a, b, c, d float32}

func Benchmark_Add4(b *testing.B) {

func Benchmark_Add5(b *testing.B) {

The benchmark results:

Benchmark_Add4-4 2.649 ns/op

Value copy scenarios

box non-interface values into interfaces (convert non-interface values

func buildArray() [N]int {

func Benchmark_Sum_RangeArray(b *testing.B) {

func Benchmark_Sum_RangeArrayPtr2(b *testing.B) {

func Benchmark_Sum_RangeSlice(b *testing.B) {

The benchmark results:

Benchmark_Sum_RangeArray-4 897.6 ns/op

The Sum_RangeArrayPtr1 function is faster than Sum_RangeArray , because

No array copying happens in the calls to the remaining two functions, so

type Element [10]int64

func buildSlice() []Element {

func Benchmark_PlainForLoop(b *testing.B) {

func Benchmark_OneIterationVar(b *testing.B) {

func Benchmark_UseSecondIterationVar(b *testing.B) {