Clojure - Why does execution hang when doing blocking insert into channel? (core.async)

Question

Consider the following snippet:

(let [chs (repeatedly 10 chan)]
  (doseq [c chs]
    (>!! c "hello"))
  (doseq [c chs]
    (println (<!! c))))

Executing this will hang forever. Why is that?

If I do (go (>! c "hello")) instead, it works just fine.

Answer 1

To make an asynchronous put, use clojure.core.async/put!

(let [chs (repeatedly 10 chan)]
  (doseq [c chs]
    (put! c "hello"))
  (doseq [c chs]
    (println (<!! c))))

This works in this example as <!! will always unblock because of all necessary puts happening asynchronously. Notice the following things:

• Blocking serves as a synchronization constraint between different processes
• >!! and <!! block the main-thread. go routines run on the main thread but their code is modified via macroexpansion so that execution control is inverted and they can be parked/executed successively ordered by the laws of core.async channel blocking/buffering logic. This technique is commonly referred to as IOC (inversion of control) state machine.
• ClojureScript has only one thread. Consequently its implementation of core.async doesn't even contain >!!/<!!. If you write code intended to be ClojureScript compatible, only take from channels within go-routines or dispatch values from them in higher order functions passed to take! and always do puts either in go-routines or use put!.

Is (go (>! ch v)) equivalent to (put! ch v)?

Yes but it's not the same. put! is an API wrapper around the channels implementation of the core.async.impl.protocols/WritePort put! method. Macroexpansion of (go (>! ch v)) ends up in the same method call happening but wraps it in lots of generated state-machine code to possibly park the putting operation and pause execution of the go-routine until a consumer is ready to take from ch (try to (macroexpand `(go (>! ch v))) yourself). Spawning a go-block to only do one asynchronous putting operation is kind of a waste and performs worse than calling put! right away. go spawns and returns an extra channel that you can take its bodies result from. This offers you to await completion of its execution which you didn't intend to do in your example (aiming at an asynchronous operation).

Answer 2

That channel has no buffer, and >!! is blocking. Refer to the examples for this exact case. They spawn a second thread for this reason - to prevent blocking the main thread. Using a goroutine, as in your question, operates on a similar principle.

You can also create the channel with some buffer space - (chan 1)