When should `new` be used in Go?

Question

It seems pointless to be used in primitive language constructs, as you can\'t specify any sort of values

func main() {
    y := new([]float)
    fmt.Printf(\         


        

Answer 1

make does only work for maps, slices and channels and composite literals like type{} work only for structs, arrays, slices, and maps. For other types, you'll have to use new to get a pointer to a newly allocated instance (if you don't want to use a longer var v T; f(&v)).

I guess this is useful if you want to initialize a struct:

typedef foo struct {
    bar *int
}
v := foo{bar: new(int)}