When Do I Need to Explicitly Dereference a Pointer in Go?

Understanding Dereferencing in Go

In Go, pointers play a crucial role in handling memory addresses. However, it is essential to understand when it becomes necessary to explicitly dereference a pointer.

Automatic Dereferencing by the Dot Operator

The dot operator (.) automatically dereferences a pointer when accessing a field of a struct. This is because the selector expression, such as x.y, is a shorthand for (*x).y. It dereferences the pointer x to access the struct member y.

Implicit Dereferencing of Array Pointers

Go also implicitly dereferences array pointers when indexing. For instance, given an array pointer a of type *array[5][5]int, the index operator a[0][0] is a shortcut for (*a)[0][0]. This syntax dereferences the pointer a to access the appropriate element within the array.

Further Clarification

The Go specification does not explicitly outline the rules for dereferencing pointers. However, the following guidelines provide further clarification:

• All value types and functions dereference their receivers implicitly.
• Functions that take pointers as arguments can dereference them internally.
• A pointer can be dereferenced multiple times, resulting in a chain of dereferences.
• Dereferencing a nil pointer will cause a runtime panic.

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