In Go, the * operator is used to represent the pointer of an object. When you assign p = q, you are essentially assigning the memory address of q to p. For example, consider the following code snippet: var p = q // p is a pointer to q p = p + 1 // p now points to q + 1

In the first line, p is a pointer to q, and we assign its memory address to p. In the second line, we increment p by 1, effectively assigning the memory address of q + 1 to p. In this way, the * operator can be used to create references to objects, and it allows you to modify the value of the object referenced by the pointer without affecting the original object itself.