Mastering Golang: Pointer Arrays

How to use Pointers with Arrays

In Go, arrays are fixed-size collections of elements that are of the same data type. Arrays in Go have a fixed length, which means you must specify the size of the array when declaring it, and this size cannot be changed later. However, you can use pointers to work with arrays and manipulate their elements indirectly.

Golang Code:

Here’s an example of how you can use pointers with arrays in Go:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    // Declare an array of integers with a fixed size of 5
    var arr [5]int

    // Initialize the elements of the array using a pointer
    for i := 0; i < len(arr); i++ {
        arr[i] = i * 2
    }

    // Print the original array
    fmt.Println("Original Array:", arr)

    // Declare a pointer to the array
    var ptr *[5]int
    ptr = &arr

    // Use the pointer to modify an element of the array
    ptr[2] = 42

    // Print the modified array
    fmt.Println("Modified Array:", arr)
}

Compile and run the code above and you will see the following result:

Original Array: [0 2 4 6 8]
Modified Array: [0 2 42 6 8]

Breaking Down the Code

• We declare an array arr of integers with a fixed size of 5.
• We initialize the elements of the array using a for loop.
• We declare a pointer ptr to the array, and we assign the address of the arr array to it using the & operator.
• We use the pointer ptr to modify an element of the array by indexing it just like we would with the array itself.
• When we modify the element through the pointer, it also changes the original array arr.