What is the difference between Go's error handling and exception handling for dealing with and reporting errors and exceptions in Go programs?
In Go, error handling is a built-in mechanism for dealing with and reporting errors that occur during program execution. It is based on the use of error values that represent specific error conditions, and the return values of functions are commonly used to communicate errors to the caller.
On the other hand, exception handling is a programming paradigm that allows for the detection and handling of exceptional conditions, such as errors or other unexpected situations, in a more flexible and centralized way. In exception handling, exceptions are thrown when an exceptional condition occurs, and they are caught by an exception handler that is specifically designed to handle the exception.
While Go does not have built-in support for exception handling, it does have the ability to recover from panics that can be raised by runtime errors. This feature is commonly used in combination with deferred function calls to clean up resources and ensure proper program termination even in the face of unexpected errors. However, this is not the same as traditional exception handling and should be used sparingly, as it can be difficult to reason about the control flow and error handling behavior of the program.