Golang : Detect variable or constant type

Problem :

You have a variable or constant and you want to know which type the variable belongs to.

Solution :

Use the reflect package. From the overview itself :

A call to ValueOf returns a Value representing the run-time data. Zero takes a Type and returns a Value representing a zero value for that type.

For example :

 package main

 import (
 "fmt"
 "reflect"
 "strconv"
 )

 func main() {

 var str string = "123456789"

 sixtyFour, err := strconv.ParseInt(str, 10, 64) // use base 10 for sanity

 if err != nil {
 fmt.Println(err)
 }

 fmt.Printf("The type of str is %v \n", reflect.TypeOf(str))

 fmt.Printf("The type of sixtyFour is %v \n", reflect.TypeOf(sixtyFour))

 }

Output :

The type of str is string

The type of sixtyFour is int64

Reference :

http://golang.org/pkg/reflect/#Type