gofmt and Consistent Style

No style debates

gofmt (and go fmt) rewrites code into the one standard Go style: tabs for indentation, aligned spacing, consistent braces. Because every Go project uses it, code looks the same everywhere and reviews focus on substance. Editors run it on save; CI can check with gofmt -l (list unformatted files). goimports also adds and removes imports.

What gofmt changes, run

I ran this with Go 1.27.1 (gofmt -d main.go | tail -n +4 in a module named demo, standard library only). gofmt -d shows the diff it would apply to a cramped file: blank lines between declarations, spaces around operators, and indented, braced blocks. The diff headers were trimmed.

package main
import "fmt"
func main(){
x:=[]int{1,2,3}
for _,v:=range x{fmt.Println(v)}
}

Output:

@@ -1,6 +1,10 @@
 package main
+
 import "fmt"
-func main(){
-x:=[]int{1,2,3}
-for _,v:=range x{fmt.Println(v)}
+
+func main() {
+	x := []int{1, 2, 3}
+	for _, v := range x {
+		fmt.Println(v)
+	}
 }

Format on save

Configure your editor to run gofmt or goimports on save so formatting never appears in reviews.

Quick check: Why does every Go project use gofmt?

• It enforces one standard style automatically, ending style debates
• It makes code run faster
• It is required to compile
• It removes comments