Pointers

Go and Pointers

Go has pointers, but no pointer arithmetic. Struct fields can be accessed through a struct pointer. The indirection through the pointer is transparent (you can directly call fields and methods on a pointer).

Note that by default Go passes arguments by value (copying the arguments), if you want to pass the arguments by reference, you need to pass pointers (or use a structure using reference values like slices and maps.

To get the pointer of a value, use the & symbol in front of the value; to dereference a pointer, use the * symbol.

Methods are often defined on pointers and not values (although they can be defined on both), so you will often store a pointer in a variable as in the example below: