Distributed Computing with Go

What is a channel?

A channel is a communication mechanism that allows us to pass data between goroutines. It is an in-built data type in Go. Data can be passed using one of the primitive data types or we can create our own complex data type using structs.

Here is a simple example to demonstrate how to use a channel:

// simchan.go 
package main 
 
import "fmt" 
 
// helloChan waits on a channel until it gets some data and then prints the value. 
func helloChan(ch <- chan string) { 
    val := <- ch 
    fmt.Println("Hello, ", val) 
} 
 
func main() { 
    // Creating a channel 
    ch := make(chan string) 
 
    // A Goroutine that receives data from a channel 
    go helloChan(ch) 
 
    // Sending data to a channel. 
    ch <- "Bob" 
} 

If we run the preceding code, it would print the following ...