I'm looking to better understand buffered channels.

I understand that using a buffer of 1 prevents certain kinds of
goroutine leaks

Are their any guidelines or caviats on how big to make the buffer size
for a channel?

Thanks
Rob

Rob <usenet@drrob1.com> writes:

> I'm looking to better understand buffered channels.
>
> I understand that using a buffer of 1 prevents certain kinds of
> goroutine leaks
>
> Are their any guidelines or caviats on how big to make the buffer size
> for a channel?
>
> Thanks
> Rob

It's not a magic bullet to prevent goroutine leaks... I guess the
advantage of setting the size to 1 means that the writing goroutine will
be able to write and exit, even if you forget to read the channel
elsewhere.

If your code falls over with a buffer size of 10, it'll probably fall
over (but slower) with a buffer size of 1000 -- that, or it'll
"complete" but still be wrong.

john

On 4/14/24 11:56, John wrote:
> Rob <usenet@drrob1.com> writes:
>
>> I'm looking to better understand buffered channels.
>>
>> I understand that using a buffer of 1 prevents certain kinds of
>> goroutine leaks
>>
>> Are their any guidelines or caviats on how big to make the buffer size
>> for a channel?
>>
>> Thanks
>> Rob
>
> It's not a magic bullet to prevent goroutine leaks... I guess the
> advantage of setting the size to 1 means that the writing goroutine will
> be able to write and exit, even if you forget to read the channel
> elsewhere.
>
> If your code falls over with a buffer size of 10, it'll probably fall
> over (but slower) with a buffer size of 1000 -- that, or it'll
> "complete" but still be wrong.
>
> john

I agree. I would start out using unbuffered channels until you know that
you need a buffered one, and why. Buffered channels can hide bugs.