[go-nuts] Why can't you take the address of a function's return value?

[conrad]

Hey All,

I've been using a typedef of

    type MaybeTimestamp *int64

so we can JSON encode timestamps correctly, 
see 
https://medium.com/coding-and-deploying-in-the-cloud/time-stamps-in-golang-abcaf581b72f
 
for inspriation

I was surprised that the following didn't work (see 
https://play.golang.org/p/1QQylqTLkB):

    func NewMaybeTimestamp(t time.Time) MaybeTimestamp {
        return &t.Unix()
    }

    // fails with:
    // tmp/sandbox449672725/main.go:14: cannot take the address of t.Unix()

I can fix this by introducing a temporary variable:

    func NewMaybeTimestamp(t time.Time) MaybeTimestamp {
        temp := t.Unix()
        return &temp
    }

Seeing as this is the obvious solution to this problem, I was pretty 
disappointed that the compiler couldn't insert the temporary for me.

Is this something that should change, or is it just a limitation hard-coded 
by the compatibility guarantee?

Conrad

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