when I compile my code, I get the following error message, not sure why it happens. Can someone help me point why? Thank you in advance.
cannot use px.InitializePaxosInstance(val) (type PaxosInstance) as type *PaxosInstance in assignment
type Paxos struct {
instance map[int]*PaxosInstance
}
type PaxosInstance struct {
value interface{}
decided bool
}
func (px *Paxos) InitializePaxosInstance(val interface{}) PaxosInstance {
return PaxosInstance {decided:false, value: val}
}
func (px *Paxos) PartAProcess(seq int, val interface{}) error {
px.instance[seq] = px.InitializePaxosInstance(val)
return nil
}
Your map is expecting a pointer to a PaxosInstance (*PaxosInstance), but you are passing a struct value to it. Change your Initialize function to return a pointer.
func (px *Paxos) InitializePaxosInstance(val interface{}) *PaxosInstance {
return &PaxosInstance {decided:false, value: val}
}
Now it returns a pointer. You can take the pointer of a variable using & and (should you ever need to) dereference it again with *. After a line like
x := &PaxosInstance{}
or
p := PaxosInstance{}
x := &p
the value type of x is now *PaxosInstance. And if you ever need to (for whatever reason), you can dereference it (follow the pointer to the actual value) back into a PaxosInstance struct value with
p = *x
You usually do not want to pass structs around as actual values, because Go is pass-by-value, which means it will copy the whole thing.
As for reading the compiler errors, you can see what it was telling you. The type PaxosInstance and type *PaxosInstance are not the same.
The instance field within the Paxos struct is a map of integer keys to pointers to PaxosInstance structs.
When you call:
px.instance[seq] = px.InitializePaxosInstance(val)
You're attempting to assign a concrete (not pointer) PaxosInstance struct into an element of px.instance, which are pointers.
You can alleviate this by returning a pointer to a PaxosInstance in InitializePaxosInstance, like so:
func (px *Paxos) InitializePaxosInstance(val interface{}) *PaxosInstance {
return &PaxosInstance{decided: false, value: val}
}
or you could modify the instance field within the Paxos struct to not be a map of pointers:
type Paxos struct {
instance map[int]PaxosInstance
}
Which option you choose is up to your use case.