Comment 1:

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

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.

Comment 3:

I can't see anything wrong here.

Status changed to WorkingAsIntended.