How to find address of constant in go?

Question

We have written one program by which we try to find an address of a constant. Is it possible to do it like that?
package main

func main() {
        const k = 5
        address := &k
}

It gives an error, can anyone tell how can we find the address of a constant?

Gopher · Accepted Answer

In short: you can't. The error message says: cannot take the address of k There are limitations on the operand of the address operator &. Spec: Address operators: For an operand x of type T, the address operation &x generates a pointer of type *T to x. The operand must be addressable, that is, either a variable, pointer indirection, or slice indexing operation; or a field selector of an addressable struct operand; or an array indexing operation of an addressable array. As an exception to the addressability requirement, x may also be a (possibly parenthesized) composite literal. If the evaluation of x would cause a run-time panic, then the evaluation of &x does too. Constants are not listed as addressable, and things that are not listed in the spec as addressable (quoted above) cannot be the operand of the address operator & (you can't take the address of them). It is not allowed to take the address of a constant. This is for 2 reasons: A constant may not have an address at all. And even if a constant value is stored in memory at runtime, this is to help the runtime to keep constants that: constant. If you could take the address of a constant value, you could assign the address (pointer) to a variable and you could change that (the pointed value, the value of the constant).

Go Language

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