A pointer holds a variable's address in the computer's memory. One can say that once a pointer is created, its value is just an address that lead you to where in the computer's memory the program will store the actual data.
Example
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
// Creating a pointer
var fullNamePtr *string = new(string)
fmt.Println(fullNamePtr) // Prints the address: 0x14000110230
// Storing value in the pointer's address by dereferencing it
*fullNamePtr = "John Doe"
fmt.Println(fullNamePtr, *fullNamePtr)
// Getting the pointer of an existing variable
country := "Brazil"
fmt.Println(&country)
}
When to use pointers
Since I come from the Javascript world, despite learning the syntax to create a pointer, learning when to use them wasn't that obvious.
For instance, in Javascript, it is possible to mutate a property from literal object inside a function by just updating the argument passed:
const person = {
name: "John Doe",
};
function updateName(person, name) {
person.name = name;
}
updateName(person, "Jane Smith");
console.log(person); // { name: "Jane Smith" }
In Go, such operation wouldn't mutate the struct passed as argument, unless the function updateName was declared with an interface ready to receive a pointer, rather than an actual value.
package main
import (
"fmt"
)
type Person struct {
Name string
}
func updatePersonName(person *Person, name string) {
person.Name = name
}
func main() {
fmt.Println("Go fundamentals")
person := Person{Name: "John Doe"}
fmt.Println(person) // {John Doe}
updatePersonName(&person, "Jane Smith")
fmt.Println(person) // {Jane Smith}
}