Which applies not just to integer math, but also to floating point:

http://play.golang.org/p/vEmiqUyPag

Division by zero in floating point is well defined and useful, and does not produce a runtime exception. So why is this a compile time error?

Edit And it produces the wrong result for division by negative zero: http://play.golang.org/p/DKoVG0Vlaf It should be -Inf, not +Inf. Go's floating point math is whack.

And here's what it looks like at runtime: http://play.golang.org/p/bVh52aKvMi

Does it only throw a compiler error if you use 0 as a constant? Let's say you have a function that returns an int; does it force you to check if that int is non-zero before using it in division?

It can only throw a compiler error if you use a 0 literal (or constant), because it cannot determine the runtime value of a variable denominator at compile-time (obviously).

It does not force you to check, but if you wanted to "catch" the "exception" (really, "recover from the panic"), here's how you would do that. Note that this is admittedly a somewhat unidiomatic use of recover(): http://play.golang.org/p/dAQ01dus9Y