How Does the Asterisk (*) Work with Pointers in Go?

Understanding the Role of the Asterisk in Go

The Go programming language employs the asterisk (*) to perform several critical operations. These include denoting pointers to variables, facilitating indirect assignments, and enabling pointer dereferencing.

Pointers and Indirect Assignments

In the example code provided:

s := "hello"
var p *string = &s

The asterisk '', when used before a type (string), declares a pointer to that type. In this case, 'p' becomes a memory address pointing to the string 's'.

The assignment 'p = &s' uses the '&' operator to take the address of 's' and store it in 'p'. This establishes a connection between 'p' and 's', where changes made through one will reflect in the other.

Pointer Dereferencing

The asterisk '*', when used before a variable or expression, provides access to the value it points to. For instance:

*p = "ciao"

In this line, the asterisk before 'p' dereferences the pointer and assigns the value "ciao" to the string that 'p' points to. This indirect assignment modifies the original string 's'.

References

The ampersand '&' operator can also be seen in the provided code, serving a distinct purpose.

&s

When prefixed to a variable or expression, '&' returns a reference to it. In this instance, '&s' provides a way to obtain the memory address of the string 's'.

So, while the asterisk '*' is primarily involved in pointer creation and dereferencing, the ampersand '&' facilitates the generation of references.

The above is the detailed content of How Does the Asterisk (*) Work with Pointers in Go?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!