encoding/json: Marshal/Unmarshal shouldn't accept a double pointer

[OneOfOne]

What does 'go version' print?
go version devel +6d7a9c796f88 Fri Nov 14 12:08:46 2014 -0500 linux/amd64
and the playground.

What steps reproduce the problem?
http://play.golang.org/p/tDU_IzwVFg

What happened?
It runs fine

What should have happened instead?
It should panic or return an error because we're passing a pointer to a nil pointer and
reassigning it.

[minux]

Comment 1:

why should that be forbidden?
the docs doesn't say double indirection is invalid.
besides, it's consistent with encoding/gob.

[OneOfOne]

Comment 2:

My understanding is it assigns a new pointer a nil pointer:
var s *Struct
x := &s // address of a nil pointer
*x = &Struct{} // assigns "nil" *s to a new value
I guess my C/C++ background just sees it weird.
I didn't assign it to encoding/json in the summary because I think it's a general/spec
bug, or at least it should be but I could be wrong.

[ianlancetaylor]

Comment 3:

I can't see anything wrong here.

Status changed to WorkingAsIntended.