Why Go split by newline separator needs to be escaped when received as an argument

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"
	"strings"
)

func main() {
	arguments := os.Args

	words := strings.Split(arguments[1], "\n")

	fmt.Println(words)
	fmt.Println(words[0])
}

example:

go run main.go "hello\nthere"

output:

[hello\nthere]
hello\nthere

expected:

[hello there]
hello

why does the separator for the newline "\n" needs to be escaped "\\n" to get the expected result?

Because you don't need to escape the newline if used like this https://play.golang.org/p/UlRISkVa8_t

You could try to pass a ANSI C like string

go run main.go $'hello\nthere'

You're assuming that Go sees your input as:

"hello\nthere"

but it really sees your input as:

`hello\nthere`

So, if you want that input to be recognized as a newline, then you need to unquote it. But that's a problem, because it doesn't have quotes either. So you need to add quotes, then remove them before you can continue with your program:

package main

import (
   "fmt"
   "strconv"
)

func unquote(s string) (string, error) {
   return strconv.Unquote(`"` + s + `"`)
}

func main() {
   s, err := unquote(`hello\nthere`)
   if err != nil {
      panic(err)
   }
   fmt.Println(s)
}

Result:

hello
there