Go Pointers

How it works

A pointer contains the address of a value. & takes an address, and * dereferences a pointer. Passing a pointer copies the pointer while preserving access to the same target. A nil pointer has no target and must be checked before dereferencing.

Run this Go example

Install Go separately from the official Go downloads and check go version in a new terminal. The reviewed baseline is Go 1.27.3 on Windows amd64; the authored syntax and standard-library APIs require Go 1.22 or newer. Save the complete source below as pointers.go in a learning folder, then run go run pointers.go from that folder. These examples use only the standard library.

Bhylu has no Go browser runner. Apache, MySQL, PHP and the JavaScript or Python playground are not required to run these files. File examples own a temporary directory; HTTP client examples create an ephemeral loopback server and close it. They do not contact an external API.

Download the complete pointers.go · Download all source files with hash checks

For the optional collection download, save download-examples.mjs in a new learning folder and run node download-examples.mjs. A local preview uses node download-examples.mjs http://127.0.0.1:8000/examples/go/. The downloader refuses an existing bhylu-go-examples folder and installs or executes no Go code.

Example

package main

import (
	"fmt"
)

func increment(count *int) bool {
	if count == nil {
		return false
	}
	*count++
	return true
}

func main() {
	count := 4
	increment(&count)
	fmt.Println(count)
	fmt.Println(increment(nil))
}

Expected result

5
false

increment changes the integer owned by main and reports whether a target was supplied. Go manages the storage lifetime; a pointer is still not permission to access shared state concurrently.