In an error condition, I tried to return nil, which throws the error:
cannot use nil as type time.Time in return argument
What is the zero value for time.Time?
Invoking an empty time.Time struct literal will return Go's zero date. Thus, for the following print statement:
fmt.Println(time.Time{})
The output is:
0001-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC
For the sake of completeness, the official documentation explicitly states:
The zero value of type Time is January 1, year 1, 00:00:00.000000000 UTC.
The zero value for time.Time is 0001-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC See http://play.golang.org/p/vTidOlmb9P
You should use the Time.IsZero() function instead:
func (Time) IsZero
func (t Time) IsZero() bool
IsZero reports whether t represents the zero time instant, January 1, year 1, 00:00:00 UTC.