The maximum value for an int type in Go

How does one specify the maximum value representable for an unsigned integer type?

I would like to know how to initialize min in the loop below that iteratively computes min and max lengths from some structs.

var minLen uint = ???
var maxLen uint = 0
for _, thing := range sliceOfThings {
  if minLen > thing.n { minLen = thing.n }
  if maxLen < thing.n { maxLen = thing.n }
}
if minLen > maxLen {
  // If there are no values, clamp min at 0 so that min <= max.
  minLen = 0
}

so that the first time through the comparison, minLen >= n.

https://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/msg/71c307e4d73024ce?pli=1

The germane part:

Since integer types use two's complement arithmetic, you can infer the min/max constant values for int and uint. For example,

const MaxUint = ^uint(0) 
const MinUint = 0 
const MaxInt = int(MaxUint >> 1) 
const MinInt = -MaxInt - 1

As per @CarelZA's comment:

uint8  : 0 to 255 
uint16 : 0 to 65535 
uint32 : 0 to 4294967295 
uint64 : 0 to 18446744073709551615 
int8   : -128 to 127 
int16  : -32768 to 32767 
int32  : -2147483648 to 2147483647 
int64  : -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807

https://golang.org/ref/spec#Numeric_types for physical type limits.

The max values are defined in the math package so in your case: math.MaxUint32

Watch out as there is no overflow - incrementing past max causes wraparound.

I would use math package for getting the maximal and minimal values for integers:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "math"
)

func main() {
    // integer max
    fmt.Printf("max int64   = %+v\n", math.MaxInt64)
    fmt.Printf("max int32   = %+v\n", math.MaxInt32)
    fmt.Printf("max int16   = %+v\n", math.MaxInt16)

    // integer min
    fmt.Printf("min int64   = %+v\n", math.MinInt64)
    fmt.Printf("min int32   = %+v\n", math.MinInt32)

    fmt.Printf("max float64 = %+v\n", math.MaxFloat64)
    fmt.Printf("max float32 = %+v\n", math.MaxFloat32)

    // etc you can see more int the `math`package
}

Output:

max int64   = 9223372036854775807
max int32   = 2147483647
max int16   = 32767
min int64   = -9223372036854775808
min int32   = -2147483648
max float64 = 1.7976931348623157e+308
max float32 = 3.4028234663852886e+38