go - Deepcopying struct having pointer-to 0 value in golang -

i have struct in golang below

type test struct {     prop *int } 

i want take deepcopy of struct object when prop pointer-to 0 value. real struct has lot more fields in , want deepcopy of entire struct obj. tried use gob encode-decode way converts pointer-to 0 nil pointer due consequence of design mentioned here. tried use reflect.copy panics error panic: reflect: call of reflect.copy on struct value. there better way deepcopy such struct objects?

edit: tried use json encoding/decoding , kind of worked. don't know drawbacks.

func deepcopy(a, b interface{}) {     byt, _ := json.marshal(a)     json.unmarshal(byt, b) } 

any comments on solution?

https://play.golang.org/p/fvkw62bydm

i used https://github.com/mohae/deepcopy/blob/master/deepcopy.go example. reflect.copy works slices or arrays. can see, using reflection right way, more complex calling reflect.copy. there few other packages, implement deep copy, don't have experience of packages.

• https://github.com/jinzhu/copier
• https://github.com/mohae/deepcopy
• https://github.com/ulule/deepcopier
• https://github.com/mitchellh/copystructure

wiki