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encoding/binary: Read fails to detect a non-pointer 'data' argument #32927

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martin-juhlin opened this issue Jul 3, 2019 · 10 comments
Closed

encoding/binary: Read fails to detect a non-pointer 'data' argument #32927

martin-juhlin opened this issue Jul 3, 2019 · 10 comments
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FrozenDueToAge NeedsDecision Feedback is required from experts, contributors, and/or the community before a change can be made.
Milestone
Go1.14

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@martin-juhlin
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What version of Go are you using (go version)?

$ go version
go version go1.12.5 darwin/amd64

Does this issue reproduce with the latest release?

It does on play.golang.org

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

go env Output
$ go env
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOCACHE="/Users/martin/Library/Caches/go-build"
GOEXE=""
GOFLAGS=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="darwin"
GOOS="darwin"
GOPATH="/Users/martin/go"
GOPROXY=""
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/local/go"
GOTMPDIR=""
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/darwin_amd64"
GCCGO="gccgo"
CC="clang"
CXX="clang++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"
GOMOD=""
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=/var/folders/r2/nz7__kld2qq9w4dhg19fmx5h0000gn/T/go-build214042936=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches -fno-common"

What did you do?

I was trying to read a value with binary.Read. That function need a pointer for the Data parameter. I was using that function faulty by passing a non pointer value to it.

var value int32
err := binary.Read(input, binary.LittleEndian, value)

https://play.golang.org/p/ZFNQ4PjM9H-

What did you expect to see?

An error message saying that Data need to be a pointer

What did you see instead?

No error and and my value was zero. The method doesn't do anything at all.
@bcmills bcmills changed the title binary.Read doesn't return error if Data isn't a pointer encoding/binary: Read fails to detect a non-pointer 'data' argument Jul 3, 2019
@bcmills bcmills added the NeedsInvestigation Someone must examine and confirm this is a valid issue and not a duplicate of an existing one. label Jul 3, 2019
@bcmills bcmills added this to the Go1.14 milestone Jul 3, 2019
@bcmills
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bcmills commented Jul 3, 2019

CC @griesemer for encoding/binary

@vitaminniy
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Looks like binary.Read should return an error when passed data interface is not a pointer or slice.

intDataSize handles the case when dst arg is a simple/primitive value but binary.Read not.

@gopherbot
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Change https://golang.org/cl/184957 mentions this issue: encoding/binary: make Read return an error when data is not a pointer

@griesemer griesemer added NeedsDecision Feedback is required from experts, contributors, and/or the community before a change can be made. and removed NeedsInvestigation Someone must examine and confirm this is a valid issue and not a duplicate of an existing one. labels Jul 3, 2019
@griesemer
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It is not clear to me that the CL chose the right approach. Given that the Read function panics when other conditions that must be satisfied are not satisfied, it seems ok to panic in this case as well.

Marked as NeedsDecision.

@vitaminniy
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vitaminniy commented Jul 3, 2019 •
edited
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My point is that in the case when a pointer to a struct is passed and struct itself is incorrect then the reflect-related code may (or may not?) panic.
It seems to me that documentation on Read is a little bit unclear.

@ianlancetaylor
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I think we should do the same thing we do in the fallback case, which is

	if size < 0 {
		return errors.New("binary.Read: invalid type " + reflect.TypeOf(data).String())
	}

@martin-juhlin
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Shouldn't the behaviour be equal to other packages? Both encoding/json and encoding/xml is returning error.
https://play.golang.org/p/o9hl4rmIUDA

@martin-juhlin
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encoding/json and encoding/xml with int32 instead of struct{} : https://play.golang.org/p/KKE6ssLsBmy

@rsc rsc modified the milestones: Go1.14, Backlog Oct 9, 2019
@smasher164 smasher164 modified the milestones: Backlog, Go1.14 Oct 11, 2019
@odeke-em
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odeke-em commented Nov 7, 2019

Hello @griesemer, I am just prodding you about this issue. From the precedent, it seems to be that returning an error is alright. This issue is marked for Go1.14 and there is already a CL that's just waiting for your blessing https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/go/+/184957/, please take a look and thank you.

@griesemer
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@odeke-em Thanks. On it.

@golang golang locked and limited conversation to collaborators Nov 7, 2020
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@rsc @ianlancetaylor @odeke-em @bcmills @griesemer @gopherbot @martin-juhlin @vitaminniy @smasher164