How come Go can be initialized using both &Person and Person?
package main
import "fmt"
type Person struct {
name string
}
func (p Person) Who() string {
return "Person: " + p.name
}
func main() {
var p1 = &Person{"Adam"}
fmt.Println(p1.Who()) // Adam
var p2 = Person{"Ben"}
fmt.Println(p2.Who()) // Ben
}
p2 := Person{"Ben"} initializes a Person struct by assigning "Ben" to name, and assigned that to p2. p2 is of a value type Person.
p1 := &Person{"Adam"} initializes a Person struct by assigning "Adam" to name, and then assigns the address of that struct to p1. p1 is of a pointer type *Person.
Who() is a method defined for a receiver of value type Person, which means, the functionality always receives a copy of the receiving instance. This is an important factor when it comes to mutability. This also works with pointer handles, such as in your example with p2, but the receiver will continue to be a local copy of the instance, unless you change the receiver definition to (p *Person), which will provide a local copy of the pointer reference.
Person{}creates a Person and&takes the address of that Person variable. It's not the same. Please take the Tour of Go to learn the syntax and how to work with pointers.