Go Channels/Select

1 Aug 2018

I've been reading parts of Katherine Cox-Buday's Concurrency in Go, and I think this incomplete list of facts about channels and select statements is useful. A full table of channel operation/state/result is on page 75; these notes are just for me and whoever else may find them useful

Channels

• a write to a full channel blocks until the channel is read from
• a read from an empty channel blocks until the channel is writen to
• a closed channel can be read from an infinite number of times
• a write to a closed channel panics

Select Statements

• all reads/writes are considered simultaneously for readiness
• when no channels are ready, the entire select statement blocks
• when more than one channel is ready, one will be chosen at random
• defualt, if present, is run when all channels are blocked