count / display the number of active goroutines

Question

I have a queue and a function that does both dequeueing and enqueueing. I want to make sure that the right amount of goroutines operate on the queue, as long as there is something in the list.

This is the code I am using, but I was wondering if there is a way of printing the amount of currently active goroutines

Link to playground

var element int

func deen(queue chan int) {

    element := <-queue
    fmt.Println("element is ", element)
    if element%2 == 0 {
        fmt.Println("new element is ", element)
        queue <- (element*100 + 11)
        queue <- (element*100 + 33)
    }
}

func main() {
    queue := make(chan int, 10)
    queue <- 1
    queue <- 2
    queue <- 3
    queue <- 0 
    for len(queue) != 0 {
        for i := 0; i < 2; i++ {
            go deen(queue)
        }
    }
    fmt.Scanln()
    fmt.Println("list is has len", len(queue)) //this must be 0

}    

Answer 1

There's runtime.NumGoroutine but you're approaching this wrong.

1. Your loops will keep spawning goroutines.
2. this will unnecessarily burn cpu cycles because of the for loop.

One approach is to use a sync.WaitGroup.

func deen(wg *sync.WaitGroup, queue chan int) {
    for element := range queue {
        fmt.Println("element is ", element)
        if element%2 == 0 {
            fmt.Println("new element is ", element)
            wg.Add(2)
            queue <- (element*100 + 11)
            queue <- (element*100 + 33)
        }
        wg.Done()
    }
}

func main() {
    var wg sync.WaitGroup
    queue := make(chan int, 10)
    queue <- 1
    queue <- 2
    queue <- 3
    queue <- 0
    for i := 0; i < 4; i++ {
        wg.Add(1)
        go deen(&wg, queue)
    }
    wg.Wait()
    close(queue)
    fmt.Println("list len", len(queue)) //this must be 0

}

playground

--- old buggy version with a race in it ---

func deen(wg *sync.WaitGroup, queue chan int) {
    for element := range queue {
        wg.Done()
        fmt.Println("element is ", element)
        if element%2 == 0 {
            fmt.Println("new element is ", element)
            wg.Add(2)
            queue <- (element*100 + 11)
            queue <- (element*100 + 33)
        }
    }
}

func main() {
    var wg sync.WaitGroup
    queue := make(chan int, 10)
    queue <- 1
    queue <- 2
    queue <- 3
    queue <- 0
    for i := 0; i < 4; i++ {
        wg.Add(1)
        go deen(&wg, queue)
    }
    wg.Wait()
    close(queue)
    fmt.Println("list is has len", len(queue)) //this must be 0
}

playground