Literal syntax

Canonical guidance

• Go has distinct literal grammars for integer, floating-point, imaginary, rune, and string forms
• raw strings and interpreted strings serve different purposes
• a rune literal is not a one-character string

Use when

• checking whether a token is valid Go syntax
• reviewing escapes or numeric base syntax
• explaining text and rune handling

Avoid

• assuming single quotes mean strings
• treating raw strings as escape-processing strings
• guessing at numeric literal features without checking the grammar

Preferred pattern

path := `C:\tmp\logs`

Anti-pattern

• using a rune literal where the API expects a string

Explanation: This is tempting when the value has one visible character, but rune and string literals denote different types and semantics.

Why

• lexical literal errors are frequent agent questions because they fail before any deeper type reasoning begins