While playing with Go code, I found out that map values are not addressable. For example,
package main
import "fmt"
func main(){
var mymap map[int]string = make(map[int]string)
mymap[1] = "One"
var myptr *string = &mymap[1]
fmt.Println(*myptr)
}
Generates error
mapaddressable.go:7: cannot take the address of mymap[1]
Whereas, the code,
package main
import "fmt"
func main(){
var mymap map[int]string = make(map[int]string)
mymap[1] = "One"
mystring := mymap[1]
var myptr *string = &mystring
fmt.Println(*myptr)
}
works perfectly fine.
Why is this so? Why have the Go developers chosen to make certain values not addressable? Is this a drawback or a feature of the language?
Edit:
Being from a C++ background, I am not used to this not addressable trend that seems to be prevalent in Go. For example, the following code works just fine:
#include<iostream>
#include<map>
#include<string>
using namespace std;
int main(){
map<int,string> mymap;
mymap[1] = "one";
string *myptr = &mymap[1];
cout<<*myptr;
}
It would be nice if somebody could point out why the same addressability cannot be achieved (or intentionally wasn't achieved) in Go.
maps get away with this because they're binary trees that needn't move existing nodes around in RAM to add new ones (but its operations average O(log n), not O(1)). C++unordered_mapis a hashtable, but has to impose certain restrictions on implementations to avoid values moving; stackoverflow.com/a/31113618/2714852 and stackoverflow.com/q/37428119 discuss.map is addressable(e.g&m), butmap elements are not addressable(e.g&(m[1])), that's different.