How to get memory size of variable?

Question

Does anybody know how to get memory size of the variable (int, string, []struct, etc) and print it? Is it possible?

var i int = 1
//I want to get something like this:
fmt.Println("Size of i is: %?", i)
//Also, it would be nice if I could store the value into a string

Answer 1

You can use the unsafe.Sizeof function for this. It returns the size in bytes, occupied by the value you pass into it. Here's a working example:

package main

import "fmt"
import "unsafe"

func main() {
    a := int(123)
    b := int64(123)
    c := "foo"
    d := struct {
        FieldA float32
        FieldB string
    }{0, "bar"}

    fmt.Printf("a: %T, %d\n", a, unsafe.Sizeof(a))
    fmt.Printf("b: %T, %d\n", b, unsafe.Sizeof(b))
    fmt.Printf("c: %T, %d\n", c, unsafe.Sizeof(c))
    fmt.Printf("d: %T, %d\n", d, unsafe.Sizeof(d))
}

Take note that some platforms explicitly disallow the use of unsafe, because it is.. well, unsafe. This used to include AppEngine. Not sure if that is still the case today, but I imagine so.

As @Timur Fayzrakhmanov notes, reflect.TypeOf(variable).Size() will give you the same information. For the reflect package, the same restriction goes as for the unsafe package. I.e.: some platforms may not allow its use.