Slicing is free and can be done inline, so your first and third examples can be changed to the range syntax: // iterate half the stack: for i := range

Slicing is free and can be done inline, so your first and third examples can be changed to the range syntax: // iterate half the stack: for i := range slice[:len(slice)/2] {} // iterate from a different starting position: for i := range slice[5:] {} That still leaves stepping and reverse, but I've found those are relatively rare, especially compared to the other two.