crypto/tls: On a failed call to tls.Dial the returned net.Conn evaluates to false on comparison of net.Conn == nil, but prints <nil> when printing the value

[raz-varren]

Please answer these questions before submitting your issue. Thanks!

What version of Go are you using (go version)?

I've reproduced the error on go 1.10.1 linux and 1.9.2 darwin

Does this issue reproduce with the latest release?

yes

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

I've produced the error on my mac:
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOEXE=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="darwin"
GOOS="darwin"
GOPATH="/Users/russell/gocode"
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/local/go"
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/darwin_amd64"
GCCGO="gccgo"
CC="clang"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fno-caret-diagnostics -Qunused-arguments -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/var/folders/d3/kzyj6l8s5j3fz4848dls2tjw0000gn/T/go-build303409938=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches -fno-common"
CXX="clang++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"
CGO_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_CPPFLAGS=""
CGO_CXXFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_FFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_LDFLAGS="-g -O2"
PKG_CONFIG="pkg-config"

and on my linux docker container:
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOCACHE="/root/.cache/go-build"
GOEXE=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/opt/gt/gocode"
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/local/go"
GOTMPDIR=""
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
GCCGO="gccgo"
CC="gcc"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"
CGO_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_CPPFLAGS=""
CGO_CXXFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_FFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_LDFLAGS="-g -O2"
PKG_CONFIG="pkg-config"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fno-caret-diagnostics -Qunused-arguments -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build289060333=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches"

What did you do?

During a failed call to tls.Dial, the returned net.Conn fails to evaluate to true in a comparison of net.Conn == nil.
The error is reproducible here: https://play.golang.org/p/KlpsoDFmEnf

What did you expect to see?

If an error occurs during a call to tls.Dial, the returned net.Conn should evaluate to true in a comparison of net.Conn == nil

What did you see instead?

net.Conn == nil evaluates to false, even though fmt.Println(net.Conn) will print <nil>

[AlexRouSg]

Simplified repo:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
)

type foo struct{}
type bar interface{}

func main() {
	var f *foo = nil
	var b bar = f

	fmt.Println(b)
	fmt.Println(b == nil)
}

[pam4]

I think the faq explains it nicely here
tls.Dial is returning a nil *tls.Conn (pointer to struct), and you are assigning it to a variable of interface type (net.Conn), that will therefore be non-nil even if the pointer inside is nil.
Then fmt.Print* uses a type switch or reflect to get the dynamic value, and it discovers a nil pointer and prints <nil>.

[agnivade]

That's right. You are assigning a *tls.Conn to net.Conn. So the underlying type will always be non-nil. Either do a type assertion to get the underlying type, or do not assign to an interface.

Closing this as "not a bug".

[raz-varren]

Ah, I see. That makes perfect sense now. Thank you.