Golang pointers

Question

I am currently learning to program with Go language. I am having some difficulties understanding Go pointers (and my C/C++ is far away now...). In the Tour of Go #52 (http:/

Answer 1

There are two main differences in those examples:

func (v *Vertex) Abs()....

The receiver will be passed-by-reference for v and you would be able to call this method only on pointers:

v := Vertex{1,3}
v.Abs() // This will result in compile time error
&v.Abs() // But this will work

On the other hand

func (v Vertex) Abs() ....

You can call this method on both pointers and structs. The receiver will be passed-by-value even when you call this method on pointers.

v := Vertex{1,3}
v.Abs() // This will work, v will be copied.
&v.Abs() // This will also work, v will also be copied.

You can declare both func (v *Vertex) and func (v Vertex).