Metadata

ID: go-best-practices/strings-index-contains

Language: Go

Severity: Notice

Category: Best Practices

Description

In Go, when checking if one string contains another string, it is recommended to use strings.Contains(x, y) instead of strings.Index(x, y) != -1.

Here are the reasons why strings.Contains(x, y) is preferred:

1. Simplicity and Readability: Using strings.Contains(x, y) provides a more readable and expressive way to check if a string x contains another string y. It clearly conveys the intention of the condition without needing an additional comparison operator.
2. Performance: strings.Contains(x, y) is optimized for efficiency and performance. It uses an optimized implementation to check for substring presence, avoiding the need to search for the index and perform an additional comparison.
3. Avoiding Errors: When using strings.Index(x, y), you need to compare against -1 to check for absence, which can be error-prone. Mistakenly using 0 instead of -1 would lead to incorrect results. Using strings.Contains(x, y) eliminates the possibility of such mistakes.

For example, consider the following code snippets:

1
2
3
if strings.Contains(x, y) {
    // Code block
}

1
2
3
if strings.Index(x, y) != -1 {
    // Code block
}

Both snippets check if the string x contains the substring y. However, the first snippet using strings.Contains(x, y) is preferred for its simplicity, readability, and performance benefits.

By using strings.Contains(x, y) instead of strings.Index(x, y) != -1, you can write cleaner and more efficient code that adheres to Go’s idiomatic style.

Non-Compliant Code Examples

import (
	"fmt"
	str2 "strings"
)

func main () {
    if str2.Index(x, y) != -1 {
        //
    }
}

import (
	"fmt"
	"strings"
)

func main () {
    if strings.Index(x, y) != -1 {
        //
    }
}

Compliant Code Examples

import (
	"fmt"
	"strings"
)

func main () {
    if strings.Contains(x, y) {
        //
    }
}