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What is the `zero` value for time.Time in Go?

In an error condition, I tried to return nil, which throws the error:

cannot use nil as type time.Time in return argument

What is the zero value for time.Time?

Solution

  • Invoking an empty time.Time struct literal will return Go's zero date. Thus, for the following print statement:

    fmt.Println(time.Time{})

    The output is:

    0001-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC

    For the sake of completeness, the official documentation explicitly states:

    The zero value of type Time is January 1, year 1, 00:00:00.000000000 UTC.