Table of Contents

Overview

First of all, what is meant by equality of the error? As you already know that error is represented by the error interface in go. In go, two interfaces are equal if

Both refer to the same underlying type

The underlying value is equal (or both nil)

So the above two points apply for comparing the error as well. There are two ways of checking if given errors are equal

Using the equality operator (==)

Using the Is function of errors package – https://golang.org/pkg/errors/ . Using Is function is preferable to using the equality operator because it checks for equality by unwrapping the first error sequentially and matches it with the target error at each step of unwrap. We will see an example, later on, to fully understand why it is preferable. Below is the syntax of Is function.

func Is(err, target error) bool

Code

Let’s see an example

package main
import (
    "errors"
    "fmt"
)
type errorOne struct{}
func (e errorOne) Error() string {
    return "Error One happended"
}
func main() {
    var err1 errorOne
    err2 := do()
    if err1 == err2 {
        fmt.Println("Equality Operator: Both errors are equal")
    }
    if errors.Is(err1, err2) {
        fmt.Println("Is function: Both errors are equal")
    }
}
func do() error {
    return errorOne{}
}

Output

Equality Operator: Both errors are equal
Is function: Both errors are equal

In the above program, we created errorOne struct which defines the Error method hence implement the error interface. We created err1 variable which is an instance of errorOne struct. We also created a do() function which raises an error of type errorOne and that is captured in err2 variable in the main function

Then we are comparing two errors using

Using equality operator

err1 == err2

Using the Is function of errors package

errors.Is(err1, err2)

Both the method correctly output that the error is equal as both err1 and err2

Refer to same underlying type which is errorOne

Have the same underlying value

We mentioned above that using the Is function preferable to using the equality operator because it checks for equality by unwrapping the first error sequentially and matches it with the target error at each step of unwrap. Let’s see an example of that

package main

import (
	"errors"
	"fmt"
)

type errorOne struct{}

func (e errorOne) Error() string {
	return "Error One happended"
}

func main() {
	err1 := errorOne{}

	err2 := do()

	if err1 == err2 {
		fmt.Println("Equality Operator: Both errors are equal")
	} else {
		fmt.Println("Equality Operator: Both errors are not equal")
	}

	if errors.Is(err2, err1) {
		fmt.Println("Is function: Both errors are equal")
	}
}

func do() error {
	return fmt.Errorf("E2: %w", errorOne{})
}

Output

Equality Operator: Both errors are not equal
Is function: Both errors are equal

The above program is almost same as the previous program just the difference being that in the do() function we are wrapping the error as well

return fmt.Errorf("E2: %w", errorOne{})

The equality operator outputs

Equality Operator: Both errors are not equal

While Is function outputs

Is function: Both errors are equal

This is because the err2 returned wraps an instance of errorOne which is not catched by the equality operator but is catched by Is function

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