How to convert a 'string pointer' to a string in Golang?

Is it possible to get the string value from a pointer to a string?

I am using the goopt package to handle flag parsing and the package returns *string only. I want to use these values to call a function in a map.

Example

var strPointer = new(string)
*strPointer = "string"

functions := map[string]func() {
    "string": func(){
        fmt.Println("works")
    },
}  

//Do something to get the string value

functions[strPointerValue]()

returns

./prog.go:17:14: cannot use strPointer (type *string) 
as type string in map index

Dereference the pointer:

strPointerValue := *strPointer

A simple function that first checks if the string pointer is nil would prevent runtime errors:

func DerefString(s *string) string {
	if s != nil {
		return *s
	}

	return ""
}