Pointer receivers in Go - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding Pointer Receivers in Go

📖 Scenario: Imagine you have a simple program to manage a bank account. You want to update the account balance by depositing money. Using pointer receivers in Go helps you change the original account data directly.

🎯 Goal: Build a Go program that uses a struct with a pointer receiver method to update the account balance.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a struct called Account with a field Balance of type float64

Create a method with a pointer receiver called Deposit that adds an amount to Balance

Create an Account variable with initial balance 100.0

Call the Deposit method with 50.0

Print the updated balance

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Pointer receivers are used in Go programs to modify data inside structs directly, such as updating account balances, user profiles, or game character stats.

💼 Career

Understanding pointer receivers is essential for Go developers to write efficient and correct code that manipulates data structures without unnecessary copying.

1

Create the Account struct

Create a struct called Account with a field Balance of type float64.

Go

// Your code here

Hint

Use the type keyword to define a struct named Account with one field Balance of type float64.

2

Add the Deposit method with pointer receiver

Add a method called Deposit with a pointer receiver (a *Account) that takes a parameter amount float64 and adds it to a.Balance.

Go

package main

type Account struct {
    Balance float64
}

// Your code here

Hint

Define a method with func (a *Account) Deposit(amount float64) and update a.Balance by adding amount.

3

Create an Account variable and call Deposit

Create a variable called myAccount of type Account with initial Balance 100.0. Then call myAccount.Deposit(50.0).

Go

package main

type Account struct {
    Balance float64
}

func (a *Account) Deposit(amount float64) {
    a.Balance += amount
}

// Your code here

Hint

Inside main(), create myAccount with Balance: 100.0 and call myAccount.Deposit(50.0).

4

Print the updated balance

Add a fmt.Println statement to print myAccount.Balance after the deposit.

Go

package main

import "fmt"

type Account struct {
    Balance float64
}

func (a *Account) Deposit(amount float64) {
    a.Balance += amount
}

func main() {
    myAccount := Account{Balance: 100.0}
    myAccount.Deposit(50.0)
    // Your code here
}

Hint

Use fmt.Println(myAccount.Balance) to show the updated balance.