Exported identifier
An exported identifier is a Go declaration or member whose name begins with an uppercase letter and is accessible from other packages.
100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
An exported element is a Go package declaration whose name begins with an uppercase letter and is accessible from other packages.
- How it is used
- Controls which declarations form a Go package’s public API and which remain available only inside the package.
- How deep it goes
- Defines capitalization-based visibility and documents API practices, but does not descend into compiler or runtime internals.
- Examples
- Uses exported Customer and ID declarations, net subdirectories, deprecation comments, and Balance getter and setter methods.
- What you can do after
- Apply Go visibility and documentation conventions when designing a package API.
Read how 100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them explains exported identifier →
Learn Go with Pocket-Sized Projects
An exported symbol is a Go declaration whose identifier begins with an uppercase letter and is accessible from another package.
- How it is used
- Defines package APIs that other Go packages can access while keeping implementation details private.
- How deep it goes
- Explains naming, documentation, compatibility, and concrete declarations, but does not descend into compiler or linker internals.
- Examples
- Uses a Logger type, a byte-based Level type, and LevelDebug, LevelInfo, and LevelError constants.
- What you can do after
- Apply Go naming and documentation conventions when designing a package API for external users.
Read how Learn Go with Pocket-Sized Projects explains exported identifier →
Related concepts
- documentationused by · Documentation is recorded explanatory, instructional, or reference information that describes a subject, system, or process to support its understanding, use, or maintenance.
- black-box testingused by · Black-box testing evaluates software through externally observable behavior and interfaces without relying on knowledge of its internal implementation.
- couplingproduces · Coupling is the degree of dependency between software components, including how their behavior, availability, or changes affect one another.
- contractpart of · An API contract is a specification of the operations, data, and behavioral expectations that govern interactions between software components.
- encoding/jsonused by · encoding/json is Go’s standard-library package for encoding Go values as JSON and decoding JSON into Go values.
These guides are generated from the text of Manning books by Manning's knowledge graph and link to the sections they draw on. The full books are available on liveBook and at manning.com.