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by lsaferite 1035 days ago
Given your example of

    log.Printf("failed to frob %s: %s", thing, error)
Wouldn't you just want to use

    slog.Error("failed to frob", thing, error)
That keeps the _value_ of `thing` as the key and the _value_ of `error` as the value. That would keep more in line with your first example.
1 comments
duskwuff 1035 days ago
Probably not. ELK-style log analysis tools benefit from having messages follow a consistent schema. Using a variable as a key makes indexing much more difficult, and can make it impossible to detect patterns where (for example) a single error appears sporadically across many different values of "thing".

If "thing" were a variable with a small cardinality (like a class name or an enumeration), that might change matters. But I'd still be reluctant to do that; having the two values available in separate fields, rather than as a single key/value pair, is a lot more flexible.

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lsaferite 1035 days ago
Oh, sorry if I was unclear, I wouldn't do that. I was just suggesting that it was closer to the original log message design. :) I'm a massive structured logging fan and have used it for quite a long time. In go I've used zerolog mostly, but I bring structured logs to whatever language I'm working with.
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