Potential nil dereference

Reports instances where pointers that might be nil are dereferenced.

Example:

type Person struct{ Name string }

func _(person *Person) {
	if person != nil || person.Name != "Peter" {
	}
}

In the provided example, person is a pointer to a Person struct, but it is nil as it is not assigned any value. Attempting to dereference person to access Name without checking if person is nil results in a runtime error.

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

GoDfaNilDereference

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Go | Data flow analysis

Inspection ID: GoDfaNilDereference

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection GoDfaNilDereference

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

GoLand 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	GoLand 2025.2, Qodana for Go 2025.2,
Can be installed with plugin:	Go, 252.26654.0

Last modified: 18 September 2025