Rust by Example

37 Channels

Rust provides asynchronous channels for communication between threads. Channels allow an unidirectional flow of information between two end-points: the Sender and the Receiver.

#![feature(std_misc)]
use std::sync::mpsc::{Sender, Receiver};
use std::sync::mpsc;
use std::thread;
static NTHREADS: usize = 3;
fn main() {
    // Channels have two endpoints: the `Sender<T>` and the `Receiver<T>`,
    // where `T` is the type of the message to be transferred
    // (type annotation is superfluous)
    let (tx, rx): (Sender<usize>, Receiver<usize>) = mpsc::channel();
    for id in 0..NTHREADS {
        // The sender endpoint can be copied
        let thread_tx = tx.clone();
        // Each thread will send its id via the channel
        thread::spawn(move || {
            // The thread takes ownership over `thread_tx`
            // Each thread queues a message in the channel
            thread_tx.send(id).unwrap();
            // Sending is a non-blocking operation, the thread will continue
            // immediately after sending its message
            println!("thread {} finished", id);
        });
    }
    // Here, all the messages are collected
    let mut ids = Vec::with_capacity(NTHREADS);
    for _ in 0..NTHREADS {
        // The `recv` method picks a message from the channel
        // `recv` will block the current thread if there no messages available
        ids.push(rx.recv());
    }
    // Show the order in which the messages were sent
    println!("{:?}", ids);
}
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