Cannot reuse a single variable in for loop - pointers

Question

I want to create a pointer and use it in every iteration but in the and I get all the same values. So I found the solution using creating the pointer in every iteration.
But this approach seems wasting a lot of memory.
Is there a way to reuse the same variable in Go?
Here is my code
func GetSchedules(start, end time.Time, usr *user.User) ([]*Scheduler, error) {
queryStr := []string{"SELECT account_id,link,text,time,image_links from", Table, "where user_id=?"}
var results = make([]*Scheduler, 0)
rows, err := DB.MYSQL_DB.Query(strings.Join(queryStr, " "), usr.Id.Hex())
if nil != err {
return results, err
}
defer rows.Close()
a := new(Scheduler)
for rows.Next() {
cols := []interface{}{&a.AccountId, &a.Link, &a.Text, &a.Time, &a.Images}
fmt.Println(rows.Scan(cols...))
results = append(results, a)
}
return results, nil
}
hereThe problem is with the variable called a although I am scanning new stuff into it in every iteration it just keeps showing the last one and the results slice contains just the last item multiple times

Answer 1

Don't worry about GC until you have proof that it is a bottleneck in your application. When reading data from DB, GC will never be a bottleneck for you. This is a simple benchmark:
func BenchmarkReallocate(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
results := make([]*foo, 0)
for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
f := new(foo)
f.bar = "baz"
results = append(results, f)
}
}
}
func BenchmarkReuse(b *testing.B) {
for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
results := make([]*foo, 0)
var f *foo
for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
f = new(foo)
f.bar = "baz"
results = append(results, f)
}
}
}
Results of running go test -bench . -benchmem:
BenchmarkReallocate-8 300000 4416 ns/op 3640 B/op 108 allocs/op
BenchmarkReuse-8 300000 4359 ns/op 3640 B/op 108 allocs/op
PASS
So in the end both ways result in exactly the same amount of allocations.
And the typical reading from DB into struct looks like this:
rows, err := db.Query("SELECT * FROM foo")
if nil != err {
return nil, err
}
defer rows.Close()
results := make([]*Scheduler, 0)
for rows.Next() {
var s Scheduler
if err := rows.Scan(&s.Id, &s.Name, &s.Something); err != nil {
return nil, err
}
results = append(results, &s)
}
if err := rows.Err(); err != nil { // Don't forget to check rows.Err()
return nil, err
}
return results, nil