Pointers

Let’s learn about pointers in Go.

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Pointers in Go
Pointers vs. variables: A graphical explanation
Reasons for using pointers
Coding example
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Pointers in Go

Go has support for pointers but not for pointer arithmetic, which is the cause of many bugs and errors in programming languages like C. A pointer is the memory address of a variable. We need to dereference a pointer in order to get its value— dereferencing is performed using the * character in front of the pointer variable. Additionally, we can get the memory address of a normal variable using an & in front of it.

Pointers vs. variables: A graphical explanation

The following diagram shows the difference between a pointer to an int and an int variable.

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Course Introduction

Introduction to Go

Basic Go Data Types

Composite Data Types

Reflection and Interfaces

Go Packages and Functions

Telling a UNIX System What to Do

Go Concurrency

Building Web Services

Working with TCP/IP and WebSocket

Working with REST APIs

Code Testing and Profiling

Working with gRPC

Go Generics

Conclusion

Appendix A—Go Garbage Collector

Pointers

Pointers in Go

Pointers vs. variables: A graphical explanation