Using goroutines to iterate through file indefinitely - loops

Question

I'm new to Go so please excuse my ignorance. I'm attempting to iterate through a bunch of wordlists line by line indefinitely with goroutines. But when trying to do so, it does not iterate or stops half way through. How would I go about this in the proper manner without breaking the flow?
package main
import (
"bufio"
"fmt"
"os"
)
var file, _ = os.Open("wordlist.txt")
func start() {
scanner := bufio.NewScanner(file)
for scanner.Scan() {
fmt.Println(scanner.Text())
}
}
func main(){
for t := 0; t < 150; t++ {
go start()
fmt.Scanln()
}
}
Thank you!

Answer 1

You declare file as a global variable. Sharing read/write file state amongst multiple goroutines is a data race and will give you undefined results.
Most likely, reads start where the last read from any of the goroutines left off. If that's end-of-file, it likely continues to be end-of-file. But, since the results are undefined, that's not guaranteed. Your erratic results are due to undefined behavior.
Here's a revised version of your program that declares a local file variable and uses a sync.Waitgroup to synchronize the completion of all the go start() goroutines and the main goroutine. The program checks for errors.
package main
import (
"bufio"
"fmt"
"os"
"sync"
)
func start(filename string, wg *sync.WaitGroup, t int) {
defer wg.Done()
file, err := os.Open(filename)
if err != nil {
fmt.Println(err)
return
}
defer file.Close()
lines := 0
scanner := bufio.NewScanner(file)
for scanner.Scan() {
lines++
}
if err := scanner.Err(); err != nil {
fmt.Println(err)
return
}
fmt.Println(t, lines)
}
func main() {
wg := &sync.WaitGroup{}
filename := "wordlist.txt"
for t := 0; t < 150; t++ {
wg.Add(1)
go start(filename, wg, t)
}
wg.Wait()
}