GoLang中地址的按位XOR

I was trying to implement the XOR Linked List in Go where I had to store the XORed address. In C/C++ it's quite simple

(*struct_type)(([unsigned] int)nodeA ^ ([unsigned] int)nodeB)

I tried a similar approach in Go. I had a struct named Node with two nodes nodeA and nodeB. To get this I tried the following ways:

*Node(uint(nodeA) ^ uint(nodeB))

Which gave me an error saying, can't convert type Node to uint. Another way I tried, which I was sure woundn't work, was

nodeA ^ nodeB

Is there a way to parse the address to int type, XOR them and then re-parse them into Node address? Or does Go provide a simple solution to this that I'm not aware of?

Use unsafe.Pointer for pointer arithmetic:

a := &T{}
b := &T{}
x := uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(a)) ^ uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(b))
y := (*T)(unsafe.Pointer(uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(a)) ^ x))
fmt.Println(b == y)  // prints true

The GC uses pointers to track memory. If the code is rewritten to

a := &T{}
b := &T{}
x := uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(a)) ^ uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(b))
b = nil // clear all pointers to struct
b = (*T)(unsafe.Pointer(uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(a)) ^ x))

then it's possible for the GC to collect the struct pointed to by b before the last assignment to b.

It's not possible to implement a safe XOR list in Go because the GC can collect the elements.

Don't do this.

You can't implement an XOR Linked List in Go. The Go garbage collector (GC) uses pointer values to keep track of in-use memory. If you mangle a pointer value, the GC will not work.

Thank you for pointing out that Go doesn't support pointer arithmetic. I did a quick research and, found and used the usafe package Go provides just in case "unsafe" work in needed. I solved the problem with the following lines of code:

a := unsafe.Pointer(nodeA)
b := unsafe.Pointer(nodeB)
return (*Node)(unsafe.Pointer(uintptr(a) ^ uintptr(b)))

The docs to unsafe package.