Introduction
Concurrency in Go, also known as Golang, is a powerful feature that allows developers to write efficient and scalable programs. Go’s concurrency model is based on the concept of “goroutines”, which are lightweight threads that can be easily created and managed by the Go runtime.
One of the key benefits of using goroutines is that they are very lightweight and can be created and managed with minimal overhead. This means that Go programs can handle a large number of concurrent tasks without consuming excessive resources.
Using the ‘go’ keyword
Goroutines are created using the “go” keyword, followed by a function call. For exmple, to start a new goroutine that runs the “addToDB()” function, you would use the following code:
go myFunc()
Using a WaitGroup
Once a goroutine is started, it will run concurrently with the main program. To wait for a goroutine to complete, we can use the “sync” package and its “WaitGroup” type. WaitGroup allows us to wait for a specific number of goroutines to complete before continuing with the main program.
var wg sync.WaitGroup
wg.Add(1)
go addToDB(&wg)
wg.Wait()
Channels
In addition to goroutines and WaitGroups, Go also provides a powerful tool for managing concurrency called “channles”. Channels allow goroutines to communicate and synchronize with each other using a simple, yet powerful mechanism.
c := make(chan int)
go func() {
c <- 1
}()
val := <-c
Here, we have created a new channel “c” of type “int” using the “make” function. We then started a new goroutine that sends the value “1” to the channel using the “<-” operator. In the main program, we use the same operator to receive a value from the channel and store it in the “val” variable.
Conclusion
Go provides a robust and efficient concurrency model that allows developers to write high-performance programs with minimal overhead. Goroutines, WaitGroups, and channels are the key building blocks for managing concurrency in Go, and understanding how to use them effectively is eessential for writing efficient and scalable Go programs.