Go how to properly use the for ... range loop - for-loop

At the moment I have a go program that contains the following code.
package main
import "time"
import "minions/minion"
func main() {
// creating the slice
ms := make([]*minion.Minion, 2)
//populating the slice and make the elements start doing something
for i := range ms {
m := &ms[i]
*m = minion.NewMinion()
(*m).Start()
}
// wait while the minions do all the work
time.Sleep(time.Millisecond * 500)
// make the elements of the slice stop with what they were doing
for i := range ms {
m := &ms[i]
(*m).Stop()
}
}
Here NewMinion() is a constructor that returns a *minion.Minion
The code works perfectly, but having to write m := &ms[i] every time I use a for ... range loop seems to me like there should be a code writer friendlier way to tackle this problem.
Ideally I'd like something like the following to be possible (using the made up &range tag):
package main
import "time"
import "minions/minion"
func main() {
// creating the slice
ms := make([]*minion.Minion, 2)
//populating the slice and make the elements start doing something
for _, m := &range ms {
*m = minion.NewMinion()
(*m).Start()
}
// wait while the minions do all the work
time.Sleep(time.Millisecond * 500)
// make the elements of the slice stop with what they were doing
for _, m := &range ms {
(*m).Stop()
}
}
Unfortunately, this is not a language feature as of yet. Any considerations on what would be the nicest way remove the m := &ms[i] from the code? Or is there no way yet that takes less effort to write than this?

Your first example is a slice of pointers, you don't need to take the address of the pointers in the slice and then dereference the pointers each time. More idiomatic Go would look like (edited slightly to run in the playground without the "minion" package):
http://play.golang.org/p/88WsCVonaL
// creating the slice
ms := make([]*Minion, 2)
//populating the slice and make the elements start doing something
for i := range ms {
ms[i] = NewMinion(i)
ms[i].Start()
// (or equivalently)
// m := MewMinion(i)
// m.Start()
// ms[i] = m
}
// wait while the minions do all the work
time.Sleep(time.Millisecond * 500)
// make the elements of the slice stop with what they were doing
for _, m := range ms {
m.Stop()
}

This is all wrong.
There is absolutely no need to take the address of a pointer in your code. ms is a slice of pointers and you constructor returns a pointer so just assign i directly:
for i := range ms {
ms[i] = minion.NewMinion()
ms[i].Start()
}
Dead simple.

Related

Why [capacity]string assert to []string will be failed in Golang?

I am using Golang1.14.
Here is the test code.
package main
import "time"
func checkData(data interface{}) {
if _, ok := data.([]string); ok {
println("Assert true.")
} else {
println("Assert false.")
}
}
func main() {
var years [20]string
for i := 0; i < 20; i++ {
years[i] = string(time.Now().Year() - 10 + i)
}
checkData(years)
foods := []string{"Fruit", "Grass", "Fish", "Meat"}
checkData(foods)
}
The output is:
Assert false.
Assert true.
I am new to Golang and really confusing that [20]string is not a []string.Can someone tell me why?Thanks.
[20]string is an array. It is a type that contains 20 strings, and if you pass it as an interface{}, you can recover it using intf.([20]string).
[]string is a slice. It has a backing array, but it is essentially a view over an array. You assertion checks if the interface is a slice, so this one works.
Arrays and slices are different things in Go. An array is a data type with a fixed size. For instance:
func f(arr [10]int) {...}
You can only call f with an int array of size 10. When you do call it, the array will be passes as value, so the function will get a copy of the array, all 10 members of it. But:
func f(arr []int) {...}
You can call f with any size of slice. A slice contains a reference to its underlying array, so an array copy will not take place here. You cannot call thisf` with an array.

Prometheus counters: How to get current value with golang client?

I am using counters to count the number of requests. Is there any way to get current value of a prometheus counter?
My aim is to reuse existing counter without allocating another variable.
Golang prometheus client version is 1.1.0.
It's easy, have a function to fetch Prometheus counter value
import (
"github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus"
dto "github.com/prometheus/client_model/go"
"github.com/prometheus/common/log"
)
func GetCounterValue(metric *prometheus.CounterVec) float64 {
var m = &dto.Metric{}
if err := metric.WithLabelValues("label1", "label2").Write(m); err != nil {
log.Error(err)
return 0
}
return m.Counter.GetValue()
}
Currently there is no way to get the value of a counter in the official Golang implementation.
You can also avoid double counting by incrementing your own counter and use an CounterFunc to collect it.
Note: use integral type and atomic to avoid concurrent access issues
// declare the counter as unsigned int
var requestsCounter uint64 = 0
// register counter in Prometheus collector
prometheus.MustRegister(prometheus.NewCounterFunc(
prometheus.CounterOpts{
Name: "requests_total",
Help: "Counts number of requests",
},
func() float64 {
return float64(atomic.LoadUint64(&requestsCounter))
}))
// somewhere in your code
atomic.AddUint64(&requestsCounter, 1)
It is possible to read the value of a counter (or any metric) in the official Golang implementation. I'm not sure when it was added.
This works for me for a simple metric with no vector:
func getMetricValue(col prometheus.Collector) float64 {
c := make(chan prometheus.Metric, 1) // 1 for metric with no vector
col.Collect(c) // collect current metric value into the channel
m := dto.Metric{}
_ = (<-c).Write(&m) // read metric value from the channel
return *m.Counter.Value
}
Update: here's a more general version that works with vectors and on histograms...
// GetMetricValue returns the sum of the Counter metrics associated with the Collector
// e.g. the metric for a non-vector, or the sum of the metrics for vector labels.
// If the metric is a Histogram then number of samples is used.
func GetMetricValue(col prometheus.Collector) float64 {
var total float64
collect(col, func(m dto.Metric) {
if h := m.GetHistogram(); h != nil {
total += float64(h.GetSampleCount())
} else {
total += m.GetCounter().GetValue()
}
})
return total
}
// collect calls the function for each metric associated with the Collector
func collect(col prometheus.Collector, do func(dto.Metric)) {
c := make(chan prometheus.Metric)
go func(c chan prometheus.Metric) {
col.Collect(c)
close(c)
}(c)
for x := range c { // eg range across distinct label vector values
m := dto.Metric{}
_ = x.Write(&m)
do(m)
}
}
While it is possible to obtain counter values in github.com/prometheus/client_golang as pointed at this answer, this looks too complicated. This can be greatly simplified by using an alternative library for exporing Prometheus metrics - github.com/VictoriaMetrics/metrics:
import (
"github.com/VictoriaMetrics/metrics"
)
var requestsTotal = metrics.NewCounter(`http_requests_total`)
//...
func getRequestsTotal() uint64 {
return requestsTotal.Get()
}
E.g. just call Get() function on the needed counter.

How to atomic store & load an interface in golang?

I want to write some code like this:
var myValue interface{}
func GetMyValue() interface{} {
return atomic.Load(myValue)
}
func StoreMyValue(newValue interface{}) {
atomic.Store(myValue, newValue)
}
It seems like that i can use LoadUintptr(addr *uintptr) (val uintptr) and StoreUintptr(addr *uintptr, val uintptr) in atomic package to achive this,but i do not know how to convert between uintptr,unsafe.Pointer and interface{}.
If i do it like this:
var V interface{}
func F(v interface{}) {
p := unsafe.Pointer(&V)
atomic.StorePointer(&p, unsafe.Pointer(&v))
}
func main() {
V = 1
F(2)
fmt.Println(V)
}
the V will always be 1
If I'm not mistaken you want atomic Value. You can store and fetch values atomically with it (signatures are interface{} but you should put same type into it). It does some unsafe pointer stuff under the hood like what you wanted to do.
Sample from docs:
var config Value // holds current server configuration
// Create initial config value and store into config.
config.Store(loadConfig())
go func() {
// Reload config every 10 seconds
// and update config value with the new version.
for {
time.Sleep(10 * time.Second)
config.Store(loadConfig())
}
}()
// Create worker goroutines that handle incoming requests
// using the latest config value.
for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
go func() {
for r := range requests() {
c := config.Load()
// Handle request r using config c.
_, _ = r, c
}
}()
}
Here's a way to use atomic.StorePointer and atomic.LoadPointer (based on your example):
package main
import (
"fmt"
"sync/atomic"
"unsafe"
)
var addr unsafe.Pointer
func GetMyValue() *interface{} {
return (*interface{})(atomic.LoadPointer(&addr))
}
func StoreMyValue(newValue *interface{}) {
atomic.StorePointer(&addr, unsafe.Pointer(newValue))
}
func main() {
var i interface{}
i = 1
StoreMyValue(&i)
fmt.Println("before:", *GetMyValue())
i = 2
StoreMyValue(&i)
fmt.Println("after", *GetMyValue())
}
Playground link
Note that this will not make your object thread-safe. Only the pointer is stored/loaded atomically. Also, I would avoid using interface{} and prefer concrete types whenever possible.
As an alternative to using 'any' (interface{}), Go 1.19 (Q3 2022) comes with new types in the sync/atomic package that make it easier to use atomic values, such as atomic.Int64 and atomic.Pointer[T].
That would be easier than using atomic.StorePointer.
This comes from issue 50860 "sync/atomic: add typed atomic values".
And CL 381317
Pointer[T] also avoids conversions using unsafe.Pointer at call sites.
You cannot do this.
You will have to protect the store/load with a mutex.
The internal representation of an interface is not specified by the language and might (is) to large to be handled by package atomic.

initializing a struct containing a slice of structs in golang

I have a struct that I want to initialize with a slice of structs in golang, but I'm trying to figure out if there is a more efficient version of appending every newly generated struct to the slice:
package main
import (
"fmt"
"math/rand"
)
type LuckyNumber struct {
number int
}
type Person struct {
lucky_numbers []LuckyNumber
}
func main() {
count_of_lucky_nums := 10
// START OF SECTION I WANT TO OPTIMIZE
var tmp []LuckyNumber
for i := 0; i < count_of_lucky_nums; i++ {
tmp = append(tmp, LuckyNumber{rand.Intn(100)})
}
a := Person{tmp}
// END OF SECTION I WANT TO OPTIMIZE
fmt.Println(a)
}
You can use make() to allocate the slice in "full-size", and then use a for range to iterate over it and fill the numbers:
tmp := make([]LuckyNumber, 10)
for i := range tmp {
tmp[i].number = rand.Intn(100)
}
a := Person{tmp}
fmt.Println(a)
Try it on the Go Playground.
Note that inside the for I did not create new "instances" of the LuckyNumber struct, because the slice already contains them; because the slice is not a slice of pointers. So inside the for loop all we need to do is just use the struct value designated by the index expression tmp[i].
You can use make() the way icza proposes, you can also use it this way:
tmp := make([]LuckyNumber, 0, countOfLuckyNums)
for i := 0; i < countOfLuckyNums; i++ {
tmp = append(tmp, LuckyNumber{rand.Intn(100)})
}
a := Person{tmp}
fmt.Println(a)
This way, you don't have to allocate memory for tmp several times: you just do it once, when calling make. But, contrary to the version where you would call make([]LuckyNumber, countOfLuckyNums), here, tmp only contains initialized values, not uninitialized, zeroed values. Depending on your code, it might make a difference or not.

Can we write a generic array/slice deduplication in go?

Is there a way to write a generic array/slice deduplication in go, for []int we can have something like (from http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Remove_duplicate_elements#Go ):
func uniq(list []int) []int {
unique_set := make(map[int] bool, len(list))
for _, x := range list {
unique_set[x] = true
}
result := make([]int, len(unique_set))
i := 0
for x := range unique_set {
result[i] = x
i++
}
return result
}
But is there a way to extend it to support any array? with a signature like:
func deduplicate(a []interface{}) []interface{}
I know that you can write that function with that signature, but then you can't actually use it on []int, you need to create a []interface{} put everything from the []int into it, pass it to the function then get it back and put it into a []interface{} and go through this new array and put everything in a new []int.
My question is, is there a better way to do this?
While VonC's answer probably does the closest to what you really want, the only real way to do it in native Go without gen is to define an interface
type IDList interface {
// Returns the id of the element at i
ID(i int) int
// Returns the element
// with the given id
GetByID(id int) interface{}
Len() int
// Adds the element to the list
Insert(interface{})
}
// Puts the deduplicated list in dst
func Deduplicate(dst, list IDList) {
intList := make([]int, list.Len())
for i := range intList {
intList[i] = list.ID(i)
}
uniques := uniq(intList)
for _,el := range uniques {
dst.Insert(list.GetByID(el))
}
}
Where uniq is the function from your OP.
This is just one possible example, and there are probably much better ones, but in general mapping each element to a unique "==able" ID and either constructing a new list or culling based on the deduplication of the IDs is probably the most intuitive way.
An alternate solution is to take in an []IDer where the IDer interface is just ID() int. However, that means that user code has to create the []IDer list and copy all the elements into that list, which is a bit ugly. It's cleaner for the user to wrap the list as an ID list rather than copy, but it's a similar amount of work either way.
The only way I have seen that implemented in Go is with the clipperhouse/gen project,
gen is an attempt to bring some generics-like functionality to Go, with some inspiration from C#’s Linq and JavaScript’s underscore libraries
See this test:
// Distinct returns a new Thing1s slice whose elements are unique. See: http://clipperhouse.github.io/gen/#Distinct
func (rcv Thing1s) Distinct() (result Thing1s) {
appended := make(map[Thing1]bool)
for _, v := range rcv {
if !appended[v] {
result = append(result, v)
appended[v] = true
}
}
return result
}
But, as explained in clipperhouse.github.io/gen/:
gen generates code for your types, at development time, using the command line.
gen is not an import; the generated source becomes part of your project and takes no external dependencies.
You could do something close to this via an interface. Define an interface, say "DeDupable" requiring a func, say, UniqId() []byte, which you could then use to do the removing of dups. and your uniq func would take a []DeDupable and work on it

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