What is the difference between Go's pointer arithmetic and pointer dereferencing in Go programs?

Question

Jayant Kumar · Accepted Answer

Go's pointer arithmetic and pointer dereferencing are two fundamental operations that can be performed on pointers in Go programs.
Pointer arithmetic involves performing arithmetic operations on pointers, such as adding or subtracting integer values to/from pointers, in order to change the memory address that the pointer is pointing to. For example, if we have a pointer **p** that points to the memory location **0x100**, we can use pointer arithmetic to move the pointer to the next memory location by adding **1** to the pointer's value, resulting in a new pointer value of **0x101**.
However, Go does not allow arbitrary pointer arithmetic like some other programming languages. Instead, it only allows pointer arithmetic to be performed on pointers to elements of an array. This is because Go's garbage collector needs to know the size and layout of all data on the heap, and allowing arbitrary pointer arithmetic would make this difficult.
Pointer dereferencing involves accessing the value stored in the memory location that the pointer is pointing to. This is done using the ***** operator in Go. For example, if we have a pointer **p** that points to the memory location **0x100**, we can use pointer dereferencing to access the value stored at that memory location by writing **p**. If **p** points to an integer, for example, **p** would give us the integer value stored at the memory location **0x100**.
Pointer arithmetic and pointer dereferencing are often used together in Go programs to manipulate data structures that are stored in memory. For example, we can use pointer arithmetic to traverse an array or linked list, and use pointer dereferencing to access or modify the values stored in the array or list.

What is the difference between Go's pointer arithmetic and pointer dereferencing in Go programs?

Similar Questions

What is the difference between Go's pointer arithmetic and pointer dereferencing in Go programs?

Jayant Kumar @jayantkumar314

Similar Questions