What role does the receiver object play when handling pointers?

In Go, a receiver object is a variable through which a method accesses the data of the structure or type it belongs to. When working with pointers, the receiver allows modifying the state of the object the pointer points to.

If a method is declared with a pointer receiver, for example:

func (r *ReceiverType) Method() {
    // can modify fields of r
}

then inside the method, you can change the structure's fields, and these changes will be visible outside the method. This is important for methods that need to modify the object's state.

If the receiver is not a pointer, the method receives a copy of the object, and changes inside the method will not affect the original.

Thus, the role of the receiver when handling pointers is to provide access to the original object for reading and modifying its state.