Declaring Map Literals

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's GO journey — lesson 85 of 109.

Map literals let you create and initialize maps in a single statement. They're similar to slice literals but require both key and value for each entry.

Create a map literal with string keys and integer values:

ages := map[string]int{
    "Alice": 25,
    "Bob":   30,
    "Carol": 27,
}

fmt.Println(ages)

Result:

map[Alice:25 Bob:30 Carol:27]

You can also create an empty map literal:

emptyMap := map[string]int{}
fmt.Println(emptyMap)

Result:

map[]

Challenge

Beginner

In this challenge, you'll practice creating a map literal in Go. Maps are collections of key-value pairs, similar to dictionaries in other languages.

Your task is to create a map literal that stores information about a few countries and their capitals. The map should have country names as keys (strings) and capital cities as values (also strings).

Cheat sheet

Map literals allow you to create and initialize maps in a single statement using curly braces with key-value pairs:

ages := map[string]int{
    "Alice": 25,
    "Bob":   30,
    "Carol": 27,
}

You can also create an empty map literal:

emptyMap := map[string]int{}

Try it yourself

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
	// TODO: Create a map literal called 'capitals' that maps countries to their capital cities
	// Include at least these three pairs:
	// "France" -> "Paris"
	// "Japan" -> "Tokyo"
	// "Brazil" -> "Brasilia"
	
	// This will print out the map
	fmt.Println(capitals)
	
	// This will print out the capital of Japan
	fmt.Println("The capital of Japan is:", capitals["Japan"])
}