title: Is there a disadvantage of using a pointer in a struct?
body: <p>I am playing around with mysql and returning the result into an array of structs.</p>
  
  <pre><code>type User struct {
      FirstName string
      LastName  string
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Go does not allow nil values as string, but if I make the strings pointers</p>
  
  <pre><code>type User struct {
      FirstName *string
      LastName  *string
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>then it is allowed and I can parse NULL values from the database into nil strings.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a specific disadvantage of using pointers to allow nil? Any reason why I should work with the more than cumbersome NullString approach?</p>
  
  <pre><code>type NullString struct {
      String string
      Valid bool
  }
  </code></pre>