On: Why I Like Go

[ericbb]

Incidentally, I don't think it's entirely true that "there isn't any pointer math". I've never used it but I understand that you can do C-like pointer tricks by using the package called "unsafe": http://golang.org/pkg/unsafe/ and http://golang.org/ref/spec#Package_unsafe

[dchest → ericbb]

Yes, indeed. Here's the "canonical" C strlen translated to unsafe Go with pointer arithmetic:

  package main
  
  import (
  	"fmt"
  	"unsafe"
  )
  
  func strlen(b []byte) int {
  	str := uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(&b[0]))
  	s := str
  	for ; *(*byte)(unsafe.Pointer(s)) != 0; s++ {}
  	return int(s - str)
  }
  
  func main() {
  	fmt.Println(strlen([]byte("ho ho ho\000")))
  }

Not that anyone should use it :-)

The safe and readable variant of this, often used in Go code, is "slice arithmetic", like this: http://golang.org/src/pkg/crypto/sha256/sha256.go#L105