Deepcopying struct having pointer-to 0 value in golang

Question

I have a struct in golang as below

type Test struct {
    prop *int
}

I want to take deepcopy of the struct object when prop is pointer-to zero value. The real struct has lot more fields in it and I want deepcopy of entire struct obj. I tried to use gob encode-decode way but it converts pointer-to 0 to nil pointer due to consequence of the design as mentioned here. I also tried to use reflect.Copy but it panics with error panic: reflect: call of reflect.Copy on struct Value. Is there a better way to deepcopy such struct objects?

EDIT: I tried to use json encoding/decoding and it kind of worked. But I don't know its drawbacks.

func DeepCopy(a, b interface{}) {
    byt, _ := json.Marshal(a)
    json.Unmarshal(byt, b)
}

Any comments on this solution?

Answer 1

As of now, I am using the json encoding/decoding solution and it is working well.

func DeepCopy(a, b interface{}) {
    byt, _ := json.Marshal(a)
    json.Unmarshal(byt, b)
}

I heard the possible disadvantages are:

• it is kind of slow
• uses json-tags in struct
• only copies public members

But none of them are affecting me right now. So I am setting this as answer until I get anything better solution than this.