I’m reviewing the tour of Go and I ran into these exercises:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    s := []int{2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13}
    printSlice(s)

    // Slice the slice to give it zero length.
    s = s[:0]
    printSlice(s)

    // Extend its length.
    s = s[:4]
    printSlice(s)

    // Drop its first two values.
    s = s[2:]
    printSlice(s)
}

func printSlice(s []int) {
    fmt.Printf("len=%d cap=%d %vn", len(s), cap(s), s)
}

prints:

len=6 cap=6 [2 3 5 7 11 13]
len=0 cap=6 []
len=4 cap=6 [2 3 5 7]
len=2 cap=4 [5 7]

which I was beginning to understand, since the previous slice (s[:4]) had a length of 4, the capacity for the new one would reflect this length.

But then I went a little further:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    a := make([]int, 5)
    printSlice("a", a)

    b := make([]int, 0, 5)
    printSlice("b", b)

    c := b[:2]
    printSlice("c", c)

    d := c[2:5]
    printSlice("d", d)
}

func printSlice(s string, x []int) {
    fmt.Printf("%s len=%d cap=%d %vn",
        s, len(x), cap(x), x)
}

prints:

a len=5 cap=5 [0 0 0 0 0]
b len=0 cap=5 []
c len=2 cap=5 [0 0]
d len=3 cap=3 [0 0 0]

and now I’m confused because the capacity of s[2:5] is now 3, and not the length of the previous slice.

Can someone please explain this behavior?