golang why comparing two variables pointing to struct behaves differently?

Question

I have created two instances of same struct, Confused by the output when I compare two variables point to instances of struct.

package main

import "fmt"

type Person struct {
    name string
}

func main() {
   p1 := &Person{name: "guru"}
   p2 := &Person{name: "guru"}
   fmt.Println(p1 == p2) // false, compares by address?
   p3 := Person{name: "guru"}
   p4 := Person{name: "guru"}
   fmt.Println(p3 == p4) // true , why? compares by content?
}

does == operator works like overload operator?

Answer 1

p1 == p2 is pointer comparison, it compares the pointer values (the memory addresses). Since you used 2 composite literals (and took their addresses), they will point to 2 distinct variables, so the addresses will be different (since size of Person is not zero). Spec: Composite literals:

Taking the address of a composite literal generates a pointer to a unique variable initialized with the literal's value.

p3 == p4 compares struct values, it compares them field-by-field, and since the matching fields have equal values, the comparison will result in true.

Comparison rules are in Spec: Comparison operators:

The equality operators == and != apply to operands that are comparable. The ordering operators <, <=, >, and >= apply to operands that are ordered. These terms and the result of the comparisons are defined as follows:

• [...]
• Pointer values are comparable. Two pointer values are equal if they point to the same variable or if both have value nil. Pointers to distinct zero-size variables may or may not be equal.
• [...]
• Struct values are comparable if all their fields are comparable. Two struct values are equal if their corresponding non-blank fields are equal.