Len and Cap Review

The length of a slice may be changed as long as it still fits within the limits of the underlying array; just assign it to a slice of itself. The capacity of a slice, accessible by the built-in function cap, reports the maximum length the slice may assume. Here is a function to append data to a slice. If the data exceeds the capacity, the slice is reallocated. The resulting slice is returned. The function uses the fact that len and cap are legal when applied to the nil slice, and return 0.

Referenced from Effective Go

func Append(slice, data []byte) []byte {
    l := len(slice)
    if l + len(data) > cap(slice) {  // reallocate
        // Allocate double what's needed, for future growth.
        newSlice := make([]byte, (l+len(data))*2)
        // The copy function is predeclared and works for any slice type.
        copy(newSlice, slice)
        slice = newSlice
    }
    slice = slice[0:l+len(data)]
    copy(slice[l:], data)
    return slice
}