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Which of the following is a valid metric name?
According to Prometheus naming rules, metric names must match the regex [a-zA-Z_:][a-zA-Z0-9_:]*. This means metric names must begin with a letter, underscore, or colon, and can only contain letters, digits, and underscores thereafter.
The valid metric name among the options is go_goroutines, which follows all these rules. It starts with a letter (g), uses underscores to separate words, and contains only allowed characters.
By contrast:
go routines is invalid because it contains a space.
go.goroutines is invalid because it contains a dot (.), which is reserved for recording rule naming hierarchies, not metric identifiers.
99_goroutines is invalid because metric names cannot start with a number.
Following these conventions ensures compatibility with PromQL syntax and Prometheus' internal data model.
Extracted from Prometheus documentation -- Metric Naming Conventions and Data Model Rules sections.