Menu
I have a blocking operation in a 3rd party library that I don't control. It could potentially go forever. So I want to set a timeout on it. The obvious way is to wrap it with a channel and a goroutine and then select on the result with time.After. However, the problem is the goroutine running the blocking operation could potentially go forever.
Here is an example to illustrate this http://repl.it/90o
Is there a way to cancel a goroutine or have it garbage collected?
461
You can't kill a goroutine from outside. You can signal a goroutine to stop using a channel, but there's no handle on goroutines to do any sort of meta management. Goroutines are intended to cooperatively solve problems, so killing one that is misbehaving would almost never be an adequate response.
If there is no default case, the "select" statement blocks until at least one of the communications can proceed. So, without a default case, the code will block until some data is available in either of the channels. It implicitly waits for the other goroutines to wake up and write to their channel.
Go can and does use only blocking calls because everything runs in goroutines and they're not real OS threads.
You can't stop a goroutine from the "outside". The goroutine has to support some kind of termination signalling (most often a channel). But if it does not, you can't force it or kill it.
If you can't do anything about the 3rd party lib you're using, the most that you could do is run it in a different process (in a different application started by your go app) which you can kill, but that is just ugly and too cumbersome.
148
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
