How to check if a map contains a key in Go?

One line answer:

if val, ok := dict["foo"]; ok {
    //do something here
}

Explanation:

if statements in Go can include both a condition and an initialization statement. The example above uses both:

• initializes two variables - val will receive either the value of "foo" from the map or a "zero value" (in this case the empty string) and ok will receive a bool that will be set to true if "foo" was actually present in the map

• evaluates ok, which will be true if "foo" was in the map

If "foo" is indeed present in the map, the body of the if statement will be executed and val will be local to that scope.

In addition to The Go Programming Language Specification, you should read Effective Go. In the section on maps, they say, amongst other things:

An attempt to fetch a map value with a key that is not present in the map will return the zero value for the type of the entries in the map. For instance, if the map contains integers, looking up a non-existent key will return 0. A set can be implemented as a map with value type bool. Set the map entry to true to put the value in the set, and then test it by simple indexing.

attended := map[string]bool{
    "Ann": true,
    "Joe": true,
    ...
}

if attended[person] { // will be false if person is not in the map
    fmt.Println(person, "was at the meeting")
}

Sometimes you need to distinguish a missing entry from a zero value. Is there an entry for "UTC" or is that 0 because it's not in the map at all? You can discriminate with a form of multiple assignment.

var seconds int
var ok bool
seconds, ok = timeZone[tz]

For obvious reasons this is called the “comma ok” idiom. In this example, if tz is present, seconds will be set appropriately and ok will be true; if not, seconds will be set to zero and ok will be false. Here's a function that puts it together with a nice error report:

func offset(tz string) int {
    if seconds, ok := timeZone[tz]; ok {
        return seconds
    }
    log.Println("unknown time zone:", tz)
    return 0
}

To test for presence in the map without worrying about the actual value, you can use the blank identifier (_) in place of the usual variable for the value.

_, present := timeZone[tz]

Searched on the go-nuts email list and found a solution posted by Peter Froehlich on 11/15/2009.

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
        dict := map[string]int {"foo" : 1, "bar" : 2}
        value, ok := dict["baz"]
        if ok {
                fmt.Println("value: ", value)
        } else {
                fmt.Println("key not found")
        }
}

Or, more compactly,

if value, ok := dict["baz"]; ok {
    fmt.Println("value: ", value)
} else {
    fmt.Println("key not found")
}

Note, using this form of the if statement, the value and ok variables are only visible inside the if conditions.

Have a look at this snippet of code

nameMap := make(map[string]int)
nameMap["river"] = 33
v ,exist := nameMap["river"]
if exist {
    fmt.Println("exist ",v)
}

    var d map[string]string
    value, ok := d["key"]
    if ok {
        fmt.Println("Key Present ", value)
    } else {
        fmt.Println(" Key Not Present ")
    }

It is mentioned under "Index expressions".

An index expression on a map a of type map[K]V used in an assignment or initialization of the special form

v, ok = a[x] 
v, ok := a[x] 
var v, ok = a[x]

yields an additional untyped boolean value. The value of ok is true if the key x is present in the map, and false otherwise.

A two value assignment can be used for this purpose. Please check my sample program below

package main

import (
    "fmt"
)

func main() {
    //creating a map with 3 key-value pairs
    sampleMap := map[string]int{"key1": 100, "key2": 500, "key3": 999}
    //A two value assignment can be used to check existence of a key.
    value, isKeyPresent := sampleMap["key2"]
    //isKeyPresent will be true if key present in sampleMap
    if isKeyPresent {
        //key exist
        fmt.Println("key present, value =  ", value)
    } else {
        //key does not exist
        fmt.Println("key does not exist")
    }
}

Example usage: Looping through a slice, for pairMap checking if key exists. It an algorithm to find all pairs that adds to a specific sum.

func findPairs(slice1 []int, sum int) {
    pairMap := make(map[int]int)
    for i, v := range slice1 {
        if valuei, ok := pairMap[v]; ok {
            fmt.Println("Pair Found", i, valuei)
        } else {
            pairMap[sum-v] = i
        }
    }
}