Go: **Type pointer

Question

In tutorial is written:

The type *T is a pointer to a T value. The & operator generates a pointer to its operand.

I am just playing around with pointers in Go and have following:

example := 42

p:=&example
fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(&p)) // **int
fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(*p)) // int

So if I got it correctly, &p is a pointer to a pointer to an int value.

What is use of **Type in the Go language?

Answer 1

Here's a simple demonstration of the concept of a chain of pointers:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    i := 42
    fmt.Printf("i: %[1]T %[1]d\n", i)
    p := &i
    fmt.Printf("p: %[1]T %[1]p\n", p)
    j := *p
    fmt.Printf("j: %[1]T %[1]d\n", j)
    q := &p
    fmt.Printf("q: %[1]T %[1]p\n", q)
    k := **q
    fmt.Printf("k: %[1]T %[1]d\n", k)
}

Playground: https://play.golang.org/p/WL2M1jp1T3

Output:

i: int 42
p: *int 0x10410020
j: int 42
q: **int 0x1040c130
k: int 42