Go experts, please someone explain the behavior of this code. why does it output Let's GoGoGo
instead of the first value assigned to msg
. I know this has something to do with goroutine. If someone versed with Go could explain it to me concretely I would appreciate it. Here is the playground.
package main
import (
"fmt"
"time"
)
// try to run: go run -race
func main() {
msg := "Let's Go"
go func() {
// Print: "Let's Go"
fmt.Println(msg)
}()
msg = "Let's GoGoGo"
time.Sleep(1 * time.Second)
}
The very simplest answer I can give is that consider the goroutine similar to a process. When you call go func (){...}() it tells the program "Please, start this "process" in the background while I keep executing my program". As you may know, starting a process might take some time. So while it's starting up, the main program keeps executing, outputting "Let's GoGoGo". If you put your sleep before msg = "Let's GoGoGo" you would probably(not at all guaranteed!!) see "Let's Go" printed instead.
I would recommend a book, called "Concurrency in Go" to help you understand how concurrency is done in Go.