Is assigning a pointer atomic in Go?

Question

Is assigning a pointer atomic in Go?

Do I need to assign a pointer in a lock? Suppose I just want to assign the pointer to nil, and would like other threads to be abl

Answer 1

In addition to Nick's answer, since Go 1.4 there is atomic.Value type. Its Store(interface) and Load() interface methods take care of the unsafe.Pointer conversion.

Simple example:

package main

import (
    "sync/atomic"
)

type stats struct{}

type myType struct {
    stats atomic.Value
}

func main() {
    var t myType
    
    s := new(stats)
    
    t.stats.Store(s)
    
    s = t.stats.Load().(*stats)
}

Or a more extended example from the documentation on the Go playground.