What is the difference between Go's index-based and pointer-based slice access?

Question

Jayant Kumar · Accepted Answer

In Go, slice is a dynamic data structure that represents a contiguous segment of an array. It is a reference type that points to an underlying array and provides a way to access and manipulate its elements. There are two ways to access slice elements: index-based and pointer-based access.
Index-based slice access is the most common way of accessing slice elements. It uses the square bracket notation with an index value to get or set the value at that position. 
For example:
s := []int{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
fmt.Println(s[2]) // Output: 3

Pointer-based slice access, on the other hand, uses a pointer to the slice's underlying array to access its elements. This is done by taking a slice of the slice, specifying a range of indices that covers the desired elements. 
For example:
s := []int{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
p := &#x26;s[2] // get the address of the 3rd element
t := s[2:4] // create a slice from the 3rd to the 4th element
fmt.Println(*p, t) // Output: 3 [3 4]

In this example, the pointer p is used to access the third element of the slice. The range operator s[2:4] creates a new slice that includes the third and fourth elements of the original slice. The pointer-based approach is useful when you need to pass a slice to a function that requires a pointer to an array.

What is the difference between Go's index-based and pointer-based slice access?

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What is the difference between Go's index-based and pointer-based slice access?

Jayant Kumar @jayantkumar314

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