Lesson 11 of 15

Pointers Made Easy

Understand pointers and how they allow functions to modify values.

Beginner Friendly Runnable Example Go Programming

Learning objective: Use pointers to pass a variable address into a function.

What Is a Pointer?

A pointer stores the memory address of a value. Pointers are useful when you want a function to modify an existing value.

Using & and *

The & operator gets the address of a variable. The * operator accesses the value stored at that address.

Pointer Parameters

Passing a pointer to a function allows the function to update the original variable.

Example Code

Create or update your Go file, then run the program using go run main.go.

package main

import "fmt"

func increase(score *int) {
    *score = *score + 10
}

func main() {
    marks := 70
    increase(&marks)
    fmt.Println("Updated marks:", marks)
}

Key points to remember

Use & to pass the address of a variable.
Use * to access or update the value through the pointer.
Pointers are common in methods that modify struct values.

Practice Exercises

Print the address of a variable.
Write a function that changes a value using a pointer.
Explain the difference between & and * in your own words.

Continue Learning

After this lesson, continue to the next lesson or explore related tutorials on VisualStudioTutor.com.