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Advanced Techniques in Go Programming

nil Channels

Let’s learn about nil channels.

We'll cover the following...

The use of nil channels

nil channels always block! Therefore, we should only use them when we actually want that behavior.

Coding example

The code that follows illustrates nil channels:

Go (1.19.0)
package main
import (
	"fmt"
	"math/rand"
	"sync"
	"time"
)
var wg sync.WaitGroup
func add(c chan int) {
	sum := 0
	t := time.NewTimer(time.Second)
	for {
		select {
		case input := <-c:
			sum = sum + input
		case <-t.C:
			c = nil
			fmt.Println(sum)
			wg.Done()
		}
	}
}
func send(c chan int) {
	for {
		c <- rand.Intn(10)
	}
}
func main() {
	c := make(chan int)
	rand.Seed(time.Now().Unix())
	wg.Add(1)
	go add(c)
	go send(c)
	wg.Wait()
}

We are ...