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How to print double-quoted string in Golang?

Last Updated : April 20, 2025

Given a string, we have to print it within double-quotes.

Printing the double-quoted string in Golang

When we want to print a string using the fmt.Printf function – we use "%s" format specifier. But, "%s" prints the string without double-quotes.

To print double-quoted string – we can use "%q" format specifier.

Golang code to print double-quoted string

In this example, we are declaring a string variable str and printing it using "%s" and "%q" format specifier to understand the difference between printing the string with and without double quotes.

// Golang program to print double-quoted string

package main

import (
	"fmt"
)

func main() {
	str := "Hello, world!"

	fmt.Printf("value of str is: %s\n", str)
	fmt.Printf("value of str is: %q\n", str)
}

Output

value of str is: Hello, world!
value of str is: "Hello, world!"

Additional Approaches

1. Using fmt.Println for automatic double quotes

We can also use the fmt.Println function which will automatically print strings with double quotes when we use the %q format specifier.

// Golang program using fmt.Println with %q format specifier

package main

import (
	"fmt"
)

func main() {
	str := "Hello, world!"

	fmt.Println("value of str is: ", str)
	fmt.Println("value of str is: ", fmt.Sprintf("%q", str))
}

2. Using string concatenation

Another approach is to manually concatenate the double quotes with the string before printing.

// Golang program to manually add double quotes

package main

import (
	"fmt"
)

func main() {
	str := "Hello, world!"

	// manually concatenating double quotes
	fmt.Println("value of str is: " + "" + str + "")
}

3. Using fmt.Sprintf for custom formatting

We can also use fmt.Sprintf to format the string with custom quote characters.

// Golang program using fmt.Sprintf for custom quotes

package main

import (
	"fmt"
)

func main() {
	str := "Hello, world!"

	result := fmt.Sprintf(""%s"", str)
	fmt.Println("value of str is: ", result)
}