The copy() function in Golang copies the elements from a source slice to a destination slice and returns the number of elements copied.
The copy() function accepts a destination slice and a source slice of variable lengths and the same type.
It is legal to copy string slice elements to a byte slice.
The copy() function returns the number of elements copied, equal to the minimum of the length of the source slice and destination slice.
For example, if the length of the source slice is 5 and the length of the destination slice is 8, the number of copied elements will be 5. Similarly, if the length of the source slice is 10 and the length of the destination slice is 8, the number of copied elements will be 8.
The following code demonstrates how to use the copy() function in Go:
Example 1 creates a destination slice of length 4 and a source slice of length 3. As a result, only the first three elements of the destination slice are changed.
Example 2 uses the same slice as the destination and source slice. The last two elements of the slice are copied onto the first two elements of the slice. As a result, the number of copied elements is 2.
package mainimport "fmt"func main() {fmt.Println("---Example 1---")// Example 1// define s source slicesourceSlice := []int{11,22,33}// define a destination slicdestSlice := []int{44,55,66,77}// call copy functionnumberCopied := copy(destSlice, sourceSlice)// display the destination slicefmt.Println(destSlice)// display the number of copied elementsfmt.Println("Number of elements copied:")fmt.Println(numberCopied)fmt.Println("---Example 2---")// Example 2// use the same slice as the source and destination slicenumberCopied = copy(destSlice, destSlice[2:])// display the destination slicefmt.Println(destSlice)// display the number of copied elementsfmt.Println("Number of elements copied:")fmt.Println(numberCopied)}
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