Channels in Ruby

In Ruby, we can use threads and queues to achieve similar functionality to Go’s channels. Here’s an example that demonstrates the concept:

require 'thread'

# Create a new queue to act as our channel
messages = Queue.new

# Send a value into the queue using a new thread
Thread.new do
  messages.push("ping")
end

# Receive the value from the queue and print it
msg = messages.pop
puts msg

In this example, we’re using Ruby’s Queue class to simulate a channel. The Queue class provides thread-safe operations for passing messages between threads.

We create a new queue called messages using Queue.new. This queue will act as our channel for passing messages between threads.

To send a value into the queue, we create a new thread using Thread.new. Inside this thread, we use the push method to add the string “ping” to the queue. This is similar to sending a value into a channel in Go.

To receive a value from the queue, we use the pop method. This method will block until a value is available in the queue, similar to receiving from a channel in Go. We store the received value in the msg variable and then print it.

When we run this program, the “ping” message is successfully passed from one thread to another via our queue.

$ ruby channels.rb
ping

By default, the pop method blocks until a value is available in the queue. This property allowed us to wait at the end of our program for the “ping” message without having to use any other synchronization mechanism.

While Ruby’s threads and queues don’t provide exactly the same semantics as Go’s goroutines and channels, they can be used to achieve similar patterns of concurrent communication and synchronization.