Software Engineering

Goroutines

• goroutines are lightweight threads.
• A goroutine is created by invoking any function with a go prefix.
• go functionName()

Creating a goroutine

To turn any function into a "thread", e.g. a goroutine, add the go keyword before the function call.

func PrintMessage(message string) {
    fmt.Println(message)
}

func main() {
    go PrintMessage("Learning Go!")
    fmt.Println("Goodbye!")
}

TRY IT OUT

Exercise: Explore goroutines

Change the PrintMessage function to print a message 5 times.

Print two additional messages in the main function using the PrintMessage function.

Turn the calls to PrintMessage into goroutines.

Question: What is the output?

Consider: How do you know when each goroutine has finished?