reflect.Indirect() Function in Golang with Examples

Go language provides inbuilt support implementation of run-time reflection and allowing a program to manipulate objects with arbitrary types with the help of reflect package. The reflect.Indirect() Function in Golang is used to get the value that v points to, i.e., If v is a nil pointer, Indirect returns a zero Value. If v is not a pointer, Indirect returns v. To access this function, one needs to imports the reflect package in the program.

Syntax:

func Indirect(v Value) Value

Parameters: This function takes the following parameters:

• v: This parameter is the value to be passed.

Return Value: This function returns the value that v points to.

Below examples illustrate the use of the above method in Golang:

Example 1:

// Golang program to illustrate
// reflect.Indirect() Function

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "reflect"
)

// Main function
func main() {
     val1:= []int  {1, 2, 3, 4}

     var val2 reflect.Value = reflect.ValueOf(&val1)
     fmt.Println("&val2 type : ", val2.Kind())

     // using the function
     indirectI := reflect.Indirect(val2)
     fmt.Println("indirectI  type : ", indirectI.Kind())
     fmt.Println("indirectI  value : ", indirectI)

}

Output:

&val2 type :  ptr
indirectI  type :  slice
indirectI  value :  [1 2 3 4]

Example 2:

// Golang program to illustrate
// reflect.Indirect() Function

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "reflect"
)

// Main function
func main() {
     var val1 []int
     var val2 [3]string
     var val3 = make(map[int]string)

     var val4 reflect.Value = reflect.ValueOf(&val1)
     indirectI := reflect.Indirect(val4)
     fmt.Println("val1: ", indirectI.Kind())


     var val5 reflect.Value = reflect.ValueOf(&val2)
     indirectStr := reflect.Indirect(val5)
     fmt.Println("val2 type : ", indirectStr.Kind())

     var val6 reflect.Value = reflect.ValueOf(&val3)
     fmt.Println("&val3 type : ", val6.Kind())

     indirectM := reflect.Indirect(val6)
     fmt.Println("val3 type : ", indirectM.Kind())

}

Output:

val1:  slice
val2 type :  array
&val3 type :  ptr
val3 type :  map