Append not thread-safe?

Question

I noticed that if I tried appending to a slice using goroutines inside a for loop, there would be instances where I would get missing/blank data:

destSlice := make([]myClass, 0)

var wg sync.WaitGroup
for _, myObject := range sourceSlice {
    wg.Add(1)
    go func(closureMyObject myClass) {
        defer wg.Done()
        var tmpObj myClass
        tmpObj.AttributeName = closureMyObject.AttributeName
        destSlice = append(destSlice, tmpObj)
    }(myObject)
}
wg.Wait()

Sometimes, when I print all AttributeNames from destSlice, some elements are empty strings (""), and other times, some elements from sourceSlice are not present in destSlice.

Does my code have a data race, and does this mean that append is not thread-safe for concurrent use by multiple goroutines?

Answer 1

In Go no value is safe for concurrent read/write, slices (which are slice headers) are no exception.

Yes, your code has data races. Run with the -race option to verify.

Example:

type myClass struct {
    AttributeName string
}
sourceSlice := make([]myClass, 100)

destSlice := make([]myClass, 0)

var wg sync.WaitGroup
for _, myObject := range sourceSlice {
    wg.Add(1)
    go func(closureMyObject myClass) {
        defer wg.Done()
        var tmpObj myClass
        tmpObj.AttributeName = closureMyObject.AttributeName
        destSlice = append(destSlice, tmpObj)
    }(myObject)
}
wg.Wait()

Running it with

go run -race play.go

Output is:

==================
WARNING: DATA RACE
Read at 0x00c420074000 by goroutine 6:
  main.main.func1()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:20 +0x69

Previous write at 0x00c420074000 by goroutine 5:
  main.main.func1()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:20 +0x106

Goroutine 6 (running) created at:
  main.main()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:21 +0x1cb

Goroutine 5 (running) created at:
  main.main()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:21 +0x1cb
==================
==================
WARNING: DATA RACE
Read at 0x00c42007e000 by goroutine 6:
  runtime.growslice()
      /usr/local/go/src/runtime/slice.go:82 +0x0
  main.main.func1()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:20 +0x1a7

Previous write at 0x00c42007e000 by goroutine 5:
  main.main.func1()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:20 +0xc4

Goroutine 6 (running) created at:
  main.main()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:21 +0x1cb

Goroutine 5 (running) created at:
  main.main()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:21 +0x1cb
==================
==================
WARNING: DATA RACE
Write at 0x00c420098120 by goroutine 80:
  main.main.func1()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:20 +0xc4

Previous write at 0x00c420098120 by goroutine 70:
  main.main.func1()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:20 +0xc4

Goroutine 80 (running) created at:
  main.main()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:21 +0x1cb

Goroutine 70 (running) created at:
  main.main()
      /home/icza/gows/src/play/play.go:21 +0x1cb
==================
Found 3 data race(s)
exit status 66

Solution is simple, use a sync.Mutex to protect writing the destSlice value:

var (
    mu        = &sync.Mutex{}
    destSlice = make([]myClass, 0)
)

var wg sync.WaitGroup
for _, myObject := range sourceSlice {
    wg.Add(1)
    go func(closureMyObject myClass) {
        defer wg.Done()
        var tmpObj myClass
        tmpObj.AttributeName = closureMyObject.AttributeName
        mu.Lock()
        destSlice = append(destSlice, tmpObj)
        mu.Unlock()
    }(myObject)
}
wg.Wait()

You could also solve it in other ways, e.g. you could use a channel on which you'd send the value to be appended, and have a designated goroutine receiving from this channel and do the append.

Also note that while slice headers are not safe, slice elements act as different variables and different slice elements can be written concurrently without synchronization (because they are distinct variables). See Can I concurrently write different slice elements