How do you effectively terminate a Goroutine in Go?

Killing a Goroutine in Go

When working with Go routines, knowing how to terminate them effectively becomes essential. Consider the following setup:

<code class="go">func startsMain() {
    go main()
}

func stopMain() {
    // TODO: Kill main
}

func main() {
    // Infinite loop
}</code>

This setup creates an infinite loop in the goroutine named main. To terminate the loop, we need a way to control the goroutine from stopMain.

Solution: Using a Channel and select

One effective approach to kill a goroutine is through channels and the select statement.

<code class="go">var quit chan struct{}

func startLoop() {
    quit := make(chan struct{})
    go loop(quit)
}

func stopLoop() {
    close(quit)
}

func loop(quit chan struct{}) {
    for {
        select {
        case <-quit:
            return
        default:
            // Do stuff
        }
    }
}</code>

In this example, we use a zero-sized channel (chan struct{}) named quit to signal the goroutine to stop. The loop function repeatedly checks the quit channel using the select statement. When quit receives a value (indicating a stop request), the loop exits.

Other Concurrency Patterns

Go offers additional concurrency patterns for handling goroutines. Visit the Go Blog for more insights on these patterns.

Using Timers

To execute a function at regular intervals while avoiding CPU exhaustion, you can employ tickers.

<code class="go">import "time"

// [...]

func loop() {
    ticker := time.NewTicker(2 * time.Second)
    defer ticker.Stop()
    for {
        select {
        case <-quit:
            return
        case <-ticker.C:
            // Do stuff
        }
    }
}</code>

In this case, select blocks until either quit receives a value or ticker fires, allowing the function to execute at specified intervals.

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