I am new to Go and I'm trying to find a convenient way from a developers perspective to get an address of an object after changing type.
Consider these two new types:
type specialString string
type nestedStruct struct {
name *specialString
}
The canonical way I have found for filling in the nestedStruct is this:
str := "James"
specStr := specialString(str)
nested := nestedStruct{
name: &specStr,
}
Is there a way to omit the declaration of specStr
, which is then only used in one place? I tried this, but it triggers an syntax error (what is the logical reason for that?):
//Syntax error
nested := nestedStruct{
name: &specialString(str),
}
Any help would be appreciated.
You cannot take the address of an arbitrary operation, including a type conversion. For details, see How can I store reference to the result of an operation in Go?; and Find address of constant in go.
You can omit one of the local variables if you convert the string literal:
specStr := specialString("James")
nested := nestedStruct{
name: &specStr,
}
If you already have a variable of string
type and you want to omit the second variable (of specialString
type), then take the address of the existing string
variable, and convert it to *specialString
:
str := "James"
nested = nestedStruct{
name: (*specialString)(&str),
}
Try these examples on the Go Playground.
If you want to omit the local variable, see this answer for options: How do I do a literal *int64 in Go?
Use a function to eliminate the boilerplate at the point of initialization:
func specialStringPtr(s string) *specialString {
return (*specialString)(&s)
}
nested := nestedStruct{
name: specialStringPtr(str),
}