(variable) and &variable, what is the difference?

March 20, 2023

i am learning GO using exercism.com and reading the recommended documentation and articles from the syllabus.

now i am in struct and found the next code

package main

import "fmt"

type Employee struct {
  firstName, lastName string
  salary              int
  fullTime            bool
}

func main() {
  employee := &Employee{
    firstName: "Walddys",
    lastName:  "Dorrejo",
    salary:    1200,
    fullTime:  true,
  }
  fmt.Println("firstName", (*employee).firstName)
}

but by error, I typed fmt.Println("firstName", *&employee.firstName), which bring me the same result that the previous used in the block of code.

My question is, if exist any different of using this pointer or is the same?

>Solution :

&x generates a pointer to x, while *p dereferences the pointer p. So effectively * and & cancel each other out, for example the two statements v := *&x and v := x are identical.

That means that *&employee.firstName is identical to employee.firstName.

And where employee is a pointer to a struct and firstName is a field of that struct, the expression employee.firstName is actually a shorthand for (*employee).firstName.

This means that *&employee.firstName is also identical to (*employee).firstName.

Note that you should always prefer to use the shorthand notation.