Comment 1:

a nil slice is a SliceHeader where all fields are zero, and an empty slice is a
SliceHeader
where only Len and Cap fields are zero (the Data pointer is non-zero, in fact, we even
allocate space for it now).
I think they are definitely different (an example in C/C++:
char *p = NULL;
char *q = "";
)

Comment 2:

They have different memory representations, but DeepEqual is implementing some sort of
structural equality for slices. Consider
    x := []int{1, 3, 1, 3}
    fmt.Println(reflect.DeepEqual(x[:2], x[2:]))
which prints true.
I do not see how distinguishing nil is expected (or useful) here.

Comment 3:

but IMO a nil slice doesn't even have a structure to compare with.
as this is the behavior of Go 1's DeepEqual, we can't change that behavior, all
we can do is to document that.

Comment 4:

I don't think we can change it but we should document the nil handling
explicitly. It does throw people.

Comment 5:

Adding documentation, but leaving open in case we want to fix it later.

Labels changed: added go1.1maybe.

Comment 6:

Status changed to Accepted.

Comment 7:

Labels changed: added priority-later, removed priority-triage.

Comment 8:

I think this is done.

Comment 9:

This was fixed by bb1ad0db059a and 99bb8c9e067d.

Owner changed to @robpike.

Status changed to Fixed.