转到：**类型指针

Question

In tutorial is written:

The type *T is a pointer to a T value. The & operator generates a pointer to its operand.

I am just playing around with pointers in Go and have following:

example := 42

p:=&example
fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(&p)) // **int
fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(*p)) // int

So if I got it correctly, &p is a pointer to a pointer to an int value.

What is use of **Type in the Go language?

Answer 1

A pointer allows you to pass around a memory address, so that multiple scopes can use the same address, and you can change the value at that address without changing the address; effectively allowing you to share memory. A pointer to a pointer allows you to pass around the address to a memory address, so that multiple scopes can use it and you can change the address pointed to by the shared reference. With a normal pointer, if you change the address of the pointer, any other copies of that pointer held elsewhere will become "disconnected" - they will no longer point to the same value.

For example, you might have two variables being operated on in separate workers, and a central reference you want to be able to switch back and forth between them. A pointer to a pointer is one way to achieve this; the central reference can be changed to point to the pointer used by any of the workers. Each worker would hold a pointer to a value which it would operate on normally, without needing to know if the central reference points to its pointer or not.

Or, as @Volker noted, the canonical example of the linked list. Here is an example in C but the pointer logic is the same in Go.