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 the

Answer 1

Those are pointers like we have in C++.

The differences are:

• Instead of -> to call a method on a pointer, you always use ., i.e. pointer.method().

• There are no dangling pointers. It is perfectly valid to return a pointer to a local variable. Golang will ensure the lifetime of the object and garbage-collect it when it's no longer needed.

• Pointers can be created with new() or by creating a object object{} and taking the address of it with &.

• Golang does not allow pointer-arithmetic (arrays do not decay to pointers) and insecure casting. All downcasts will be checked using the runtime-type of the variable and either panic or return false as second return-value when the instance is of the wrong type, depending on whether you actually take the second return type or not.