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

$ go version
go version devel go1.18-c6abf3ba19 Tue Feb 1 13:40:29 2022 linux/amd64

Does this issue reproduce with the latest release?

Yes.

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

$ go env
GO111MODULE="on"
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN="/home/ms/go/bin"
GOCACHE="/home/ms/.cache/go-build"
GOENV="/home/ms/.config/go/env"
GOEXE=""
GOEXPERIMENT=""
GOFLAGS=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOINSECURE=""
GOMODCACHE="/home/ms/go/pkg/mod"
GONOPROXY="github.com/tokenomy"
GONOSUMDB="github.com/tokenomy"
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/home/ms/go"
GOPRIVATE="github.com/tokenomy"
GOPROXY="https://proxy.golang.org,direct"
GOROOT="/home/ms/opt/go"
GOSUMDB="sum.golang.org"
GOTMPDIR=""
GOTOOLDIR="/home/ms/opt/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
GOVCS=""
GOVERSION="devel go1.18-c6abf3ba19 Tue Feb 1 13:40:29 2022"
GCCGO="gccgo"
GOAMD64="v1"
AR="ar"
CC="gcc"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="0"
GOMOD="/home/ms/src/go/src/go.mod"
GOWORK=""
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 -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build203756167=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches"

What did you do?

After CL 24430, reflect.DeepEqual no longer returns true when comparing a *Rat built with (*Rat).SetString("0") with one built with (*Rat).SetInt64(0).
These should be equivalent, but because (*Rat).SetString does not call norm() when returning the zero value, the result of reflect.DeepEqual will be false.

One could suggest that developers should use (*Rat).Cmp instead of relying on reflect.DeepEqual, but if a (*Rat) is part of a
larger struct that is being compared, this can be cumbersome.

Given the following test scenario,

(0) Given the struct of R, S, and T that contains *Rat.
(1) Do the calculcation on R that cause the value of *Rat
    become 0.
(2) Convert the result to text, for example to JSON.
(3) Consume the result as S (by UnmarshalText).
(4) Prepare the expected value of T, since we know what to test
    and the result, we set Rat value in T to 0 using SetInt64(0).
(5) Compare the value of S with T.

The expected result should be S = T, but due to SetString return without calling norm, the result of DeepEqual(S, T) is always false.

A code snippet to simulate this scenario,

r1 := big.Rat{}
r2 := big.Rat{}

r1.SetString("0")
r2.SetInt64(0)

fmt.Printf("r1: %v\n", r1)
fmt.Printf("r2: %v\n", r2)

if !reflect.DeepEqual(&r1, &r2) {
	log.Printf("r1 != r2")
}

Playground: https://go.dev/play/p/RyS70bghhue

What did you expect to see?

r1: {{false []} {false [1]}}
r2: {{false []} {false [1]}}

What did you see instead?

r1: {{false []} {false []}} 0/1
r2: {{false []} {false [1]}} 0/1
2021/11/17 01:07:39 r1 != r2