What is the meaning of '*' and '&'?

Question

I am doing the http://tour.golang.org/. Could anyone explain me lines 1,3,5 and 7 this function especially what '*' and '&' do? I mean by mentioning them in a function declaration, what they are supposed/expected to do? A toy example:

1: func intial1(var1 int, var2 int, func1.newfunc[]) *callproperfunction { 2: 3: addition:= make ([] add1, var1) 4: for i:=1;i<var2;i++ { 5:   var2 [i] = *addtother (randomstring(lengthofcurrent)) 6:   } 7: return &callproperfunction {var1 int, var2 int, func1.newfunc[], jackpot} 8: } 

It seems that they are pointers like what we have in C++. But I cannot connect those concepts to what we have here. In other words, what '*' an '&' do when I use them in function declaration in Go.

I know what reference and dereference mean. What I cannot understand is: how we can use pointer to a function is Go. for example line 1 and 7, what these two lines do? Function named intial1 is declared that returns a pointer? and in line 7, we call it with arguments using return function.

Answer 1

This is possibly one of the most confusing things in Go. There are basically 3 cases you need to understand:

The & Operator

& goes in front of a variable when you want to get that variable's memory address.

The * Operator

* goes in front of a variable that holds a memory address and resolves it (it is therefore the counterpart to the & operator). It goes and gets the thing that the pointer was pointing at, e.g. *myString.

myString := "Hi" fmt.Println(*&myString)  // prints "Hi" 

or more usefully, something like

myStructPointer = &myStruct // ... (*myStructPointer).someAttribute = "New Value" 

* in front of a Type

When * is put in front of a type, e.g. *string, it becomes part of the type declaration, so you can say "this variable holds a pointer to a string". For example:

var str_pointer *string 

So the confusing thing is that the * really gets used for 2 separate (albeit related) things. The star can be an operator or part of a type.