Pointers
Welcome to tutorial no. 15 in Golang tutorial series.
In this tutorial, we will learn how pointers work in Go and we will also understand how Go pointers differ from pointers in other languages such as C and C++.
This tutorial has the following sections.
- What is a pointer?
- Declaring pointers
- Zero value of a pointer
- Creating pointers using the new function
- Dereferencing a pointer
- Passing pointer to a function
- Returning pointer from a function
- Do not pass a pointer to an array as an argument to a function. Use slice instead.
- Go does not support pointer arithmetic
What is a pointer?
A pointer is a variable that stores the memory address of another variable.
In the above illustration, variable b has value 156 and is stored at memory address 0x1040a124. The variable a holds the address of b. Now a is said to point to b.
Declaring pointers
*T is the type of the pointer variable which points to a value of type T.
Let’s write a program that declares a pointer.
1package main
2
3import (
4 "fmt"
5)
6
7func main() {
8 b := 255
9 var a *int = &b
10 fmt.Printf("Type of a is %T\n", a)
11 fmt.Println("address of b is", a)
12}
The & operator is used to get the address of a variable. In line no. 9 of the above program we are assigning the address of b to a whose type is *int. Now a is said to point to b. When we print the value in a, the address of b will be printed. This program outputs
Type of a is *int
address of b is 0x1040a124
You might get a different address for b since the location of b can be anywhere in memory.
Zero value of a pointer
The zero value of a pointer is nil.
1package main
2
3import (
4 "fmt"
5)
6
7func main() {
8 a := 25
9 var b *int
10 if b == nil {
11 fmt.Println("b is", b)
12 b = &a
13 fmt.Println("b after initialization is", b)
14 }
15}
b is initially nil in the above program and then later it is assigned to the address of a. This program outputs
b is <nil>
b after initialisation is 0x1040a124
Creating pointers using the new function
Go also provides a handy function new to create pointers. The new function takes a type as an argument and returns a pointer to a newly allocated zero value of the type passed as argument.
The following example will make things more clear.
1package main
2
3import (
4 "fmt"
5)
6
7func main() {
8 size := new(int)
9 fmt.Printf("Size value is %d, type is %T, address is %v\n", *size, size, size)
10 *size = 85
11 fmt.Println("New size value is", *size)
12}
In the above program, in line no. 8 we use the new function to create a pointer of type int. This function will return a pointer to a newly allocated zero value of the type int. The zero value of type int is 0. Hence size will be of type *int and will point to 0 i.e *size will be 0.
The above program will print
Size value is 0, type is *int, address is 0x414020
New size value is 85
Dereferencing a pointer
Dereferencing a pointer means accessing the value of the variable to which the pointer points. *a is the syntax to deference a.
Let’s see how this works in a program.
1package main
2import (
3 "fmt"
4)
5
6func main() {
7 b := 255
8 a := &b
9 fmt.Println("address of b is", a)
10 fmt.Println("value of b is", *a)
11}
In line no 10 of the above program, we deference a and print the value of it. As expected it prints the value of b. The output of the program is
address of b is 0x1040a124
value of b is 255
Let’s write one more program where we change the value in b using the pointer.
1package main
2
3import (
4 "fmt"
5)
6
7func main() {
8 b := 255
9 a := &b
10 fmt.Println("address of b is", a)
11 fmt.Println("value of b is", *a)
12 *a++
13 fmt.Println("new value of b is", b)
14}
In line no. 12 of the above program, we increment the value pointed by a by 1 which changes the value of b since a points to b. Hence the value of b becomes 256. The output of the program is
address of b is 0x1040a124
value of b is 255
new value of b is 256
Passing pointer to a function
1package main
2
3import (
4 "fmt"
5)
6
7func change(val *int) {
8 *val = 55
9}
10func main() {
11 a := 58
12 fmt.Println("value of a before function call is",a)
13 b := &a
14 change(b)
15 fmt.Println("value of a after function call is", a)
16}
In the above program, in line no. 14 we are passing the pointer variable b which holds the address of a to the function change. Inside change function, the value of a is changed using dereference in line no 8. This program outputs,
value of a before function call is 58
value of a after function call is 55
Returning pointer from a function
It is perfectly legal for a function to return a pointer of a local variable. The Go compiler is intelligent enough and it will allocate this variable on the heap.
1package main
2
3import (
4 "fmt"
5)
6
7func hello() *int {
8 i := 5
9 return &i
10}
11func main() {
12 d := hello()
13 fmt.Println("Value of d", *d)
14}
In line no. 9 of the program above, we return the address of the local variable i from the function hello. The behaviour of this code is undefined in programming languages such as C and C++ as the variable i goes out of scope once the function hello returns. But in the case of Go, the compiler does an escape analysis and allocates i on the heap as the address escapes the local scope. Hence this program will work and it will print,
Value of d 5
Do not pass a pointer to an array as an argument to a function. Use slice instead.
Let’s assume that we want to make some modifications to an array inside the function and the changes made to that array inside the function should be visible to the caller. One way of doing this is to pass a pointer to an array as an argument to the function.
1package main
2
3import (
4 "fmt"
5)
6
7func modify(arr *[3]int) {
8 (*arr)[0] = 90
9}
10
11func main() {
12 a := [3]int{89, 90, 91}
13 modify(&a)
14 fmt.Println(a)
15}
In line no. 13 of the above program, we are passing the address of the array a to the modify function. In line no.8 in the modify function we are dereferencing arr and assigning 90 to the first element of the array. This program outputs [90 90 91]
a[x] is shorthand for (*a)[x]. So (*arr)[0] in the above program can be replaced by arr[0]. Let’s rewrite the above program using this shorthand syntax.
1package main
2
3import (
4 "fmt"
5)
6
7func modify(arr *[3]int) {
8 arr[0] = 90
9}
10
11func main() {
12 a := [3]int{89, 90, 91}
13 modify(&a)
14 fmt.Println(a)
15}
This program also outputs [90 90 91]
Although this way of passing a pointer to an array as an argument to a function and making modification to it works, it is not the idiomatic way of achieving this in Go. We have slices for this.
Let’s rewrite the same program using slices.
1package main
2
3import (
4 "fmt"
5)
6
7func modify(sls []int) {
8 sls[0] = 90
9}
10
11func main() {
12 a := [3]int{89, 90, 91}
13 modify(a[:])
14 fmt.Println(a)
15}
In line no.13 of the program above, we pass a slice to the modify function. The first element of the slice is changed to 90 inside the modify function. This program also outputs [90 90 91]. So forget about passing pointers to arrays around and use slices instead :). This code is much cleaner and is idiomatic Go :).
Go does not support pointer arithmetic
Go does not support pointer arithmetic which is present in other languages like C and C++.
1package main
2
3func main() {
4 b := [...]int{109, 110, 111}
5 p := &b
6 p++
7}
The above program will throw compilation error *main.go:6: invalid operation: p++ (non-numeric type [3]int)
I have created a single program in github which covers everything we have discussed.
That’s it for pointers in Go. I hope you liked this tutorial. Please leave your feedback and comments. Please consider sharing this tutorial on twitter and LinkedIn. Have a good day.
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