Output formatting basics in Go - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Output formatting basics

📖 Scenario: You are working in a small shop and want to print a receipt with prices and totals neatly aligned.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to format output in Go to show prices with two decimal places and align text for a clear receipt.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a map with product names and prices

Create a variable for the total price

Use a for loop to format and print each product and price with two decimals

Print the total price formatted with two decimals

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Shops and restaurants print receipts with prices aligned and formatted for customers.

💼 Career

Formatting output is important for creating user-friendly command line tools and reports.

1

Create the product prices map

Create a map called products with these exact entries: "Apple": 0.99, "Banana": 1.29, "Cherry": 2.49

Go

// Create the map called products with the given entries
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use map[string]float64 to create the map with product names as keys and prices as values.

2

Create a total price variable

Create a variable called total of type float64 and set it to 0

Go

package main

func main() {
    products := map[string]float64{"Apple": 0.99, "Banana": 1.29, "Cherry": 2.49}
    // Create total variable here
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use total := 0.0 to create a float64 variable initialized to zero.

3

Format and sum product prices

Use a for loop with variables product and price to iterate over products. Inside the loop, add price to total and print product and price formatted with two decimals and aligned in 10 spaces for product and 6 spaces for price.

Go

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    products := map[string]float64{"Apple": 0.99, "Banana": 1.29, "Cherry": 2.49}
    total := 0.0
    // Loop over products to add prices and print formatted output
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use for product, price := range products to loop. Use fmt.Printf with %-10s for left-aligned product name and %6.2f for price with two decimals.

4

Print the total price formatted

Print the text Total: followed by the total variable formatted with two decimals and aligned in 10 spaces for the label and 6 spaces for the number.

Go

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    products := map[string]float64{"Apple": 0.99, "Banana": 1.29, "Cherry": 2.49}
    total := 0.0
    for product, price := range products {
        total += price
        fmt.Printf("%-10s %6.2f\n", product, price)
    }
    // Print total price formatted
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use fmt.Printf("%-10s %6.2f\n", "Total:", total) to print the total aligned like the products.