I always fall back on this pattern when the return values need to be used further down: foo, err := doThing(bar) if err != nil { // handle error }

I always fall back on this pattern when the return values need to be used further down: foo, err := doThing(bar) if err != nil { // handle error } foo2, err := doThing(bar) if err != nil { // handle error } Only one value in a multi-valued assignment has to be undeclared to use the short variable declaration operator (:=). If the variable already exists in the current scope and the type matches, it will get reused. https://play.golang.org/p/qo141lT-Jjp https://play.golang.org/p/qo141lT-Jjp