Question

You have a function with an argument, a pointer to a type.

type bar struct{...}

func foo(arg *bar)

Is there any difference between:

var b bar
foo(&b)

and

b := new(bar)
foo(b)

The use of new creates an allocation.

Answer 1

No, there is no difference, as, contrary to C, Go explicitly states that you can give a pointer to a locally created variable.

From the documentation :

Note that, unlike in C, it’s perfectly OK to return the address of a
local variable; the storage associated with the variable survives
after the function returns