Finding the Capacity of the Pointer in Golang

In Go, the term "capacity" is most commonly associated with slices, not pointers. A slice has both a length and a capacity, where length represents the number of current elements in the slice, and capacity indicates the total space allocated in the underlying array.

You cannot directly find the capacity of a pointer. However, if a pointer points to a slice, you can determine the capacity of that slice.

Let's go through a tutorial to better understand how to find the capacity of a slice using a pointer.

Step 1: Initialize your Go environment

If you haven't already, set up Go on your machine. You can download it from the official site.

Step 2: Create a new Go file

You can create a file named main.go.

Step 3: Implement the logic to find the capacity of a slice using a pointer

package main

import (
	"fmt"
)

func main() {
	// Create a slice
	slice := []int{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
	
	// Get a pointer to the slice
	ptrToSlice := &slice

	// Print the length and capacity of the slice using the pointer
	fmt.Printf("Length of the slice: %d\n", len(*ptrToSlice))
	fmt.Printf("Capacity of the slice: %d\n", cap(*ptrToSlice))
}

Step 4: Run the Go program

Execute the program using:

go run main.go

You should see the length and capacity of the slice printed to the console.

Summary:

In Go, you cannot directly find the capacity of a pointer. Instead, if the pointer points to a slice, you can dereference the pointer and use the built-in cap function to determine the capacity of that slice. Always remember to handle pointers with care, and ensure you're working with valid memory addresses when dereferencing pointers.

Golang find memory size of a data structure pointed by a pointer:

Description: Determine the memory size of a data structure pointed to by a pointer.

Code:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "unsafe"
)

type Person struct {
    Name string
    Age  int
}

func main() {
    person := Person{Name: "John", Age: 30}
    pointer := &person

    size := unsafe.Sizeof(*pointer)
    fmt.Printf("Memory size of pointed data: %d bytes\n", size)
}

Determine the size of the pointed data in Golang:

Description: Use the unsafe package to determine the size of the data pointed to by a pointer.

Code:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "unsafe"
)

func main() {
    data := 42
    pointer := &data

    size := unsafe.Sizeof(*pointer)
    fmt.Printf("Memory size of pointed data: %d bytes\n", size)
}

Check memory usage of a variable pointed by a pointer in Golang:

Description: Measure the memory usage of a variable pointed to by a pointer.

Code:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "unsafe"
)

func main() {
    value := 3.14
    pointer := &value

    size := unsafe.Sizeof(*pointer)
    fmt.Printf("Memory size of pointed variable: %d bytes\n", size)
}

Golang measure memory footprint of a structure via pointer:

Description: Measure the memory footprint of a structure pointed to by a pointer.

Code:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "unsafe"
)

type Point struct {
    X, Y int
}

func main() {
    point := Point{X: 1, Y: 2}
    pointer := &point

    size := unsafe.Sizeof(*pointer)
    fmt.Printf("Memory size of pointed structure: %d bytes\n", size)
}

How to inspect memory consumption of pointed data in Golang:

Description: Inspect the memory consumption of data pointed to by a pointer.

Code:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "unsafe"
)

func main() {
    var data struct {
        ID   int
        Name string
    }

    pointer := &data

    size := unsafe.Sizeof(*pointer)
    fmt.Printf("Memory size of pointed data: %d bytes\n", size)
}