Runes

Runes, also referred to as Characters, represent a single Unicode character. They are declared using the rune keyword:

index


              1
            
var myChar rune = 'a'

It's important to note that rune values are always enclosed in single quotes ('). Therefore, we wrote 'a'.

Note

Unicode is a standard that assigns a unique numerical value to each character, allowing computers to represent and process text from various languages and scripts. While it's not necessary to have an in-depth knowledge of Unicode, you can find more information on the official website.

Now, if we attempt to print the value, we might obtain an integer as output:

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              1234567
            
package main
import "fmt"

func main() {
    var myChar rune = 'a'
    fmt.Println(myChar) // Outputs '97'
}

This is because the corresponding decimal value for the character a in the Unicode system is 97. You can find a list of Unicode characters and their decimal values here.

Please note that a rune can represent only a single character at a time; therefore, the following is incorrect:

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              1
            
var myChar rune = 'ab' // Error: more than one character in rune literal

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Section 2. Chapter 4