Question

I was just reading through Effective Go and in the Pointers vs. Values section, near the end it says:

The rule about pointers vs. values for receivers is that value methods can be invoked on pointers and values, but pointer methods can only be invoked on pointers. This is because pointer methods can modify the receiver; invoking them on a copy of the value would cause those modifications to be discarded.

To test it, I wrote this:

package main

import (
  "fmt"
  "reflect"
)

type age int

func (a age) String() string {
  return fmt.Sprintf("%d yeasr(s) old", int(a))
}

func (a *age) Set(newAge int) {
  if newAge >= 0 {
    *a = age(newAge)
  }
}

func main() {
  var vAge age = 5
  pAge := new(age)

  fmt.Printf("TypeOf =>\n\tvAge: %v\n\tpAge: %v\n", reflect.TypeOf(vAge),
    reflect.TypeOf(pAge))

  fmt.Printf("vAge.String(): %v\n", vAge.String())
  fmt.Printf("vAge.Set(10)\n")
  vAge.Set(10)
  fmt.Printf("vAge.String(): %v\n", vAge.String())

  fmt.Printf("pAge.String(): %v\n", pAge.String())
  fmt.Printf("pAge.Set(10)\n")
  pAge.Set(10)
  fmt.Printf("pAge.String(): %v\n", pAge.String())
}

And it compiles, even though the document says it shouldn’t since the pointer method Set() should not be invocable through the value var vAge. Am I doing something wrong here?

Answer 1

That’s valid because vAge is addressable. See the last paragraph in Calls under the language spec:

A method call x.m() is valid if the method set of (the type of) x
contains m and the argument list can be assigned to the parameter list
of m. If x is addressable and &x’s method set contains m, x.m() is
shorthand for (&x).m().