Learning Go, 3rd Edition

Chapter 5. Pointers

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Now that you’ve seen variables and functions, it’s time to learn about pointer syntax. Then I’ll clarify the behavior of pointers in Go by comparing them to the behavior of classes in other languages. You’ll also learn how and when to use pointers, how memory is allocated in Go, and how using pointers and values properly makes Go programs faster and more efficient.

A Quick Pointer Primer

Every variable is stored in one or more contiguous memory locations, called addresses.

A pointer is a variable that holds the location where a value is stored in memory. In other words, it contains that variable’s address. If you’ve taken computer-science courses, you might have seen a graphic to represent how variables are stored in memory. A representation of the following two variables would look something like Figure 5-1:

var x int32 = 10
var y bool = true

Figure 5-1. Storing two variables ...