tutorial7

Pointers in Go

A pointer is a variable that stores the memory address of another variable. In Go, a pointer is represented using the * (asterisk) followed by the type of the stored value.

Creating Pointers

You can create a pointer using the built-in new function:

var p *int32 = new(int32) // p now stores a memory location

This creates a new int32 value, sets it to zero (the zero value for integers), and returns a pointer to it.

Using Pointers

You can change the value stored at the memory location a pointer points to:

*p = 1 // changes the value at the memory location p points to

You can also create a pointer from the address of another variable using the & operator:

p = &i // p and i now reference the same int32 value in memory

Pointers and Arrays

When working with arrays, you can pass a pointer to the array to a function if you want the function to be able to modify the original array:

func square(thing2 *[5]float64) [5]float64{
	for i := range thing2{
		thing2[i] =  thing2[i]*thing2[i]
	}
	return *thing2
}

In this function, thing2 is a pointer to an array of float64. The function squares each element of the array. Because we're passing a pointer to the array, the original array is modified.

Checkout the code

• main.go