What's the go equivalent to PHP's list()?

In PHP we have the list() which enable us to assign values to a list of variables in one operation. Eg:

<!-- language: lang-php -->

list($a, $b) = ['valueA', 'valueB'];
echo $a; # valueA
echo $b; # valueB

Is it possible do the same thing in Go? Functions like Regexp.FindStringSubmatch() returns an array, so would be nice map this values directly into other variables.

You cannot do that in go, but there is a way to achieve that by taking advantage the pointer value of it's variable.

Create a function, pass pointer of all receiver variables as slices, then re-assign the value.

func main() {
	var arr = []string{"value 1", "value 2", "value 3"}
	var a, b, c string
	
	vcopy(arr, &a, &b, &c)
    
	fmt.Println(a) // value 1
	fmt.Println(b) // value 2
	fmt.Println(c) // value 3
}
func vcopy(arr []string, dest ...*string) {
	for i := range dest {
		if len(arr) > i {
			*dest[i] = arr[i]
		}
	}
}

Example http://play.golang.org/p/gJzWp1WglJ

By using this technique, passing any variables are not a problem.

There's nothing built-in but you can write your own function to do something similar:

func unlist(x []string) (string, string) {
    return x[0], x[1]
}
a, b := unlist(values);

However, this does mean that there is no way to generalize this which means that you have to write a function for destructuring* every different number and type of argument you need it for.

*note: the general name for this operation is a "destructuring assignment".