Does Go provide REPL?

Question

The interactive environment is VERY helpful for a programmer. However, it seems Go does not provide it. Is my understanding correct?

Answer 1

Have you tried the Go Playground?

About the Go Playground

The Go Playground is a web service that runs on golang.org's servers. The service receives a Go program, compiles, links, and runs the program inside a sandbox, then returns the output.

Answer 2

No, but you can exploit the speed of compilation (as mentioned in other answers).

Have a look at rango that uses a generate-compile-run loop to mimic a REPL. You can also start it with imports and statements to begin an interactive session.

Answer 3

If you're a Vim user, the vim-go plugin (https://github.com/fatih/vim-go) provides a command (GoRun) to run and print the output of the current buffer. You still have to include all the boilerplate code of a main Go file, but it still provides a convenient way to quickly test code snippets in your local environment.

HTH

Answer 4

Please also check www.gorepl.com for go REPL and other REPLs

Answer 5

The GoSpeccy project includes a builtin REPL of a restricted subset of the Go language. The implementation is using goeval.

Answer 6

Gosh is the interactive Golang shell. The goal is to provide an easy-to-use interactive execution environment.

https://github.com/mkouhei/gosh