Pointers to Structs

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's GO journey. Lesson 97 of 109.

When working with structs, you can create pointers to them just like with other types. This is useful for passing large structs efficiently.

Define a Person struct and create a pointer to it:

type Person struct {
    name string
    age  int
}

func main() {
    person := Person{name: "Alice", age: 30}
    
    // Create a pointer to the struct
    personPtr := &person
    
    // Access fields through pointer
    fmt.Println(personPtr.name)
    fmt.Println(personPtr.age)
}

The output shows we can access fields through the pointer:

Alice
30

You can also modify fields through the pointer:

personPtr.age = 31
fmt.Println(person.age)  // Prints: 31

Challenge

Beginner

In this challenge, you'll practice working with pointers to structs in Go. You have a Person struct with name and age fields. Your task is to update the person's information using a pointer to the struct.

The code already creates a Person struct and a pointer to it. You need to modify the person's information through the pointer.

Try it yourself

package main

import "fmt"

// Person struct with name and age fields
type Person struct {
	name string
	age  int
}

func main() {
	// Create a Person struct
	person := Person{
		name: "John",
		age:  25,
	}

	// Create a pointer to the Person struct
	personPtr := &person

	// Print the original person information
	fmt.Println("Original person:")
	fmt.Printf("Name: %s, Age: %d\n", person.name, person.age)

	// TODO: Use the pointer to change the person's name to "Jane" and age to 30
	// Hint: You can access struct fields through a pointer using the dot notation
	

	// Print the updated person information
	fmt.Println("Updated person:")
	fmt.Printf("Name: %s, Age: %d\n", person.name, person.age)
}