How to restart a for loop in Go

Restart a for..range loop

There’s no way to reset a for..range loop in Go. However, you can use the goto keyword with a label to achieve a similar effect by starting the iteration again from the beginning. Here’s how to do it:

 1package main
 2
 3import "fmt"
 4
 5func main() {
 6	slice := []int{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
 7
 8	var count int
 9loop:
10	for _, v := range slice {
11		fmt.Println(v)
12
13		count++
14		if count == 2 {
15			goto loop
16		}
17	}
18}

In the above snippet, the for..range loop is given a label (loop, but it can be any name you want). Inside the loop, the goto keyword is used to break out of the loop once a certain condition is achieved. This moves control back to line 10 which effectively starts the loop from the beginning.

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Restart a standard for loop

In the snippet below, a traditional for loop is used to iterate over a slice of integers. When it’s time to reset the loop, the iterator (i) is set to -1. On the next iteration, i will be incremented before the loop body is executed (i++) which yields 0 causing the loop to have the effect of starting from the beginning.

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
	slice := []int{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}

	var count int

	for i := 0; i < len(slice); i++ {
		fmt.Println(slice[i])

		count++
		if count == 2 {
			i = -1 // restart from the beginning
		}
	}
}

You can use this technique if you want the loop to start at any index other than zero. All you need to do is set i to one less the desired index.

Thanks for reading, and happy coding!

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