String Types

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The length of a string s can be discovered using the built-in function len. The length is a compile-time constant if the string is a constant. A string’s bytes can be accessed by integer indices 0 through len(s)-1. It is illegal to take the address of such an element; if s[i] is the i‘th byte of a string, &s[i] is invalid.

There are a couple of nuggets in this paragraph.

First, you may recall from our introduction to constants that a constant may represent “… the result value of some built-in functions such as … len applied to some expressions.

Now we have an example of such an expression: Calling len on a string constant returns a constant value. So this is valid:

const str = "Hello, World"
const strLen = len(str) // 12

However, this is not:

var str = "Hello, " + name
const strLen = len(str) // Invalid (unless `name` itself is a string constant as well)

Second, the final sentence is interesting for reasons that aren’t immediately obvious.

First note that taking the address of a slice is perfectly valid:

	var s = []byte("Hello, World")
	var x = &s[3]

	fmt.Println(x) // 0xc00001c033 or some other memory location

Now that I have a pointer to a specific byte in my slice, I can do things with it, including modifying it:

	var s = []byte("Hello, World")
	var x = &s[3]
	*x = 'X'

	fmt.Println(string(s)) // HelXo, World

But if we could do the same thing with a string, we would violate the immutability trait of strings.

This is why it is impossible to take the address of an element of a string.

Quotes from The Go Programming Language Specification, Version of January 19, 2023