How to find the index of a value in a slice
Published Thu 6 Jul, 2023
Last updated Wed 16 Aug, 2023
Sometimes you need to find the index of a value in a slice, and often you’re only interested in the first occurrence of that value.
This is typically done using an Index function, which returns the index of the value in the slice or -1 when it’s not found.
Depending on your Go version you can use a different approach:
- In 1.21, you can use the
Indexfunction in theslicespackage in the standard library. - For earlier versions, you can find the same function in the experimental
slicespackage.
If you are using a Go version that does not support generics, you can always implement your own Index function. See the example below:
main.go
package main
import (
"fmt"
"slices"
)
func main() {
s := []string{"🌱", "🪡", "🌱"}
x := "🪡"
y := "🙈"
fmt.Println("slices.Index:")
fmt.Printf("index of \"%s\"? %v\n", x, slices.Index(s, x))
fmt.Printf("index of \"%s\"? %v\n", y, slices.Index(s, y))
fmt.Println("---")
fmt.Println("Index:")
fmt.Printf("index of \"%s\"? %v\n", x, Index(s, x))
fmt.Printf("index of \"%s\"? %v\n", y, Index(s, y))
}
// Index returns the index of the first occurrence of v in s.
// Index returns -1 if v is not found in s.
func Index(s []string, v string) int {
for i, vs := range s {
if vs == v {
return i
}
}
return -1
}
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