Pointers

Pointers Go Specification

• Go has pointers. A pointer holds the memory address of a value.
• The type *T is a pointer to a T value. Its zero value is nil.
• A pointer type denotes the set of all pointers to variables of a given type, called the base type of the pointer.
• The value of an uninitialized pointer is nil.
• In Go you cannot do pointer arithmetic however

var p *int returns nil

• The & operator generates a pointer to its operand.
• The * operator denotes the pointer's underlying value.

var num = 3
otherNum := &num // otherNum now points to memory address of num
*otherNum++

fmt.Println(*otherNum, num) // now contain the value 4

Note the use of the *otherNum operator this is known as deferencing while the &num points to memory address

type Number struct {
    num int
}

func (n *Number) scaler(s int) int {
    n.num *= s
    return n.num
}

Pointer Playground