In the big picture, I'm trying to implement Dijkstra's algorithm using a priority queue.

According to members of golang-nuts, the idiomatic way to do this in Go is to use the heap interface with a custom underlying data structure. So I have created Node.go and PQueue.go like so:

//Node.go
package pqueue

type Node struct {
    row    int
    col    int
    myVal  int
    sumVal int
}

func (n *Node) Init(r, c, mv, sv int) {
    n.row = r
    n.col = c
    n.myVal = mv
    n.sumVal = sv
}

func (n *Node) Equals(o *Node) bool {
    return n.row == o.row && n.col == o.col
}

And PQueue.go:

// PQueue.go
package pqueue

import "container/vector"
import "container/heap"

type PQueue struct {
    data vector.Vector
    size int
}

func (pq *PQueue) Init() {
    heap.Init(pq)
}

func (pq *PQueue) IsEmpty() bool {
    return pq.size == 0
}

func (pq *PQueue) Push(i interface{}) {
    heap.Push(pq, i)
    pq.size++
}

func (pq *PQueue) Pop() interface{} {
    pq.size--
    return heap.Pop(pq)
}

func (pq *PQueue) Len() int {
    return pq.size
}

func (pq *PQueue) Less(i, j int) bool {
    I := pq.data.At(i).(Node)
    J := pq.data.At(j).(Node)
    return (I.sumVal + I.myVal) < (J.sumVal + J.myVal)
}

func (pq *PQueue) Swap(i, j int) {
    temp := pq.data.At(i).(Node)
    pq.data.Set(i, pq.data.At(j).(Node))
    pq.data.Set(j, temp)
}

And main.go: (the action is in SolveMatrix)

// Euler 81

package main

import "fmt"
import "io/ioutil"
import "strings"
import "strconv"
import "./pqueue"

const MATSIZE = 5
const MATNAME = "matrix_small.txt"

func main() {
    var matrix [MATSIZE][MATSIZE]int
    contents, err := ioutil.ReadFile(MATNAME)
    if err != nil {
        panic("FILE IO ERROR!")
    }
    inFileStr := string(contents)
    byrows := strings.Split(inFileStr, "\n", -1)

    for row := 0; row < MATSIZE; row++ {
        byrows[row] = (byrows[row])[0 : len(byrows[row])-1]
        bycols := strings.Split(byrows[row], ",", -1)
        for col := 0; col < MATSIZE; col++ {
            matrix[row][col], _ = strconv.Atoi(bycols[col])
        }
    }

    PrintMatrix(matrix)
    sum, len := SolveMatrix(matrix)
    fmt.Printf("len: %d, sum: %d\n", len, sum)
}

func PrintMatrix(mat [MATSIZE][MATSIZE]int) {
    for r := 0; r < MATSIZE; r++ {
        for c := 0; c < MATSIZE; c++ {
            fmt.Printf("%d ", mat[r][c])
        }
        fmt.Print("\n")
    }
}

func SolveMatrix(mat [MATSIZE][MATSIZE]int) (int, int) {
    var PQ pqueue.PQueue
    var firstNode pqueue.Node
    var endNode pqueue.Node
    msm1 := MATSIZE - 1

    firstNode.Init(0, 0, mat[0][0], 0)
    endNode.Init(msm1, msm1, mat[msm1][msm1], 0)

    if PQ.IsEmpty() { // make compiler stfu about unused variable
        fmt.Print("empty")
    }

    PQ.Push(firstNode) // problem


    return 0, 0
}

The problem is, upon compiling i get the error message:

[~/Code/Euler/81] $ make
6g -o pqueue.6 Node.go PQueue.go
6g main.go
main.go:58: implicit assignment of unexported field 'row' of pqueue.Node in function argument
make: *** [all] Error 1

And commenting out the line PQ.Push(firstNode) does satisfy the compiler. But I don't understand why I'm getting the error message in the first place. Push doesn't modify the argument in any way.