Golang指针值比较

Question

I’m trying to figure out why this works.

I have an Item struct

type item struct {
    name string
    someOtherValue int 
}

and another struct

type someStruct struct {
    items []item
}

I have a function where I want to loop through and update the values.

func (s someStruct) update() {
    for i := range s.items {
         item := &s.items[i]

        if item.name == “Something” {
            doSomething(item)
        }
    }
}

When I pass item to the doSomething function, it will update the item at that address (works as planned).

My question is, why does item.name work if item supposed to be an address?

Answer 1

Because Golang has automatically dereferenced pointers.

item.name is converted to (*item).name

As with selectors, a reference to a non-interface method with a value receiver using a pointer will automatically dereference that pointer: pt.Mv is equivalent to (*pt).Mv.

You can read all the rules in Selectors specification