What can you do in 30 lines of Go? Can you create a useful, complete program that demonstrates its features? [closed]

Question

This is a web proxy I wrote to provide unauthenticated access to a web service that required HTTP basic auth. I needed it for an internal thingy (and still use it):

package main

import (
    "flag"
    "log"
    "net/http"
    "net/url"
)

var target = flag.String("target", "http://www.google.com/", "Where to go.")
var addr = flag.String("listen", ":12345", "Address/port on which to listen.")
var auth = flag.String("auth", "", "Authorization header to add (optional).")

func main() {
    flag.Parse()

    targetUrl, uerr := url.Parse(*target)
    if uerr != nil {
        log.Fatalf("Error parsing target ``%s'': ", target, uerr.String())
    }

    proxy := http.ReverseProxy{Director: func(req *http.Request) {
        req.URL.Scheme = targetUrl.Scheme
        req.URL.Host = targetUrl.Host
        req.Host = targetUrl.Host
        if *auth != "" {
            req.Header.Set("Authorization", *auth)
        }
    }}

    log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(*addr, &proxy))
}

This makes a PNG (on stdout) of a clock face showing the current time. It's barely golfed to fit thirty lines, so the code is not quite as clean as it should be.

package main
import ("image"; "image/png"; "math"; "bufio"; "os"; "time")
const clock_size = 200;
const radius = clock_size / 3;
var colour image.RGBAColor;
func circle (clock *image.RGBA) {
    for angle := float64(0); angle < 360; angle++ {
        radian_angle := math.Pi * 2 * angle / 360;
        x := radius * math.Sin (radian_angle) + clock_size/2;
        y := radius * math.Cos (radian_angle) + clock_size/2;
        clock.Set (int (x), int (y), colour);}}
func hand (clock *image.RGBA, angle float64, length float64) {
    radian_angle := math.Pi * 2 * angle;
    x_inc := math.Sin (radian_angle);
    y_inc := -math.Cos (radian_angle);
    for i := float64(0); i < length; i++ {
        x := i * x_inc + clock_size/2;
        y := i * y_inc + clock_size/2;
        clock.Set (int (x), int (y), colour);}}
func main () {
    clock := image.NewRGBA (clock_size, clock_size);
    colour.A = 255;
    circle (clock);
    time := time.LocalTime ();
    hand (clock, (float64(time.Hour) + float64(time.Minute)/60)/12, radius*0.6); // hour hand
    hand (clock, (float64(time.Minute) + float64(time.Second)/60)/60, radius*0.8); // minute hand
    out := bufio.NewWriter(os.Stdout);
    defer out.Flush();
    png.Encode(out, clock);
}

Run it like

8.out > clock.png

Notice all those float64 casts? I've NEVER seen a language as strict as Go about types.

---

This is the same code fixed with go fix (and some manual tweaking) and then automatically formatted using go fmt. Some newlines where inserted manually.

package main

import (
    "bufio"
    "image"
    "image/color"
    "image/png"
    "math"
    "os"
    "time"
)

const clock_size = 200
const radius = clock_size / 3

var colour color.RGBA

func circle(clock *image.RGBA) {
    for angle := float64(0); angle < 360; angle++ {
        radian_angle := math.Pi * 2 * angle / 360
        x := radius*math.Sin(radian_angle) + clock_size/2
        y := radius*math.Cos(radian_angle) + clock_size/2
        clock.Set(int(x), int(y), colour)
    }
}

func hand(clock *image.RGBA, angle float64, length float64) {
    radian_angle := math.Pi * 2 * angle
    x_inc := math.Sin(radian_angle)
    y_inc := -math.Cos(radian_angle)
    for i := float64(0); i < length; i++ {
        x := i*x_inc + clock_size/2
        y := i*y_inc + clock_size/2
        clock.Set(int(x), int(y), colour)
    }
}

func main() {
    clock := image.NewRGBA(image.Rect(0, 0, clock_size, clock_size))
    colour.A = 255
    circle(clock)
    time := time.Now()
    hand(clock, (float64(time.Hour())+float64(time.Minute())/60)/12, radius*0.6)   // hour hand
    hand(clock, (float64(time.Minute())+float64(time.Second())/60)/60, radius*0.8) // minute hand
    out := bufio.NewWriter(os.Stdout)
    defer out.Flush()
    png.Encode(out, clock)
}

OK, I'll get the ball rolling. Here's my first Go program. It's a very primitive chat server, and fits in 30 lines of 80 characters if I compress it down a bit; formatted with gofmt, it is 60 lines. It listens on a hard coded port (4242), does basically no error handling, and doesn't handle client disconnection other than stopping trying to read from a client if it gets an error.

package main
import ("net";"container/vector";"bufio";"strings")
type client struct { conn net.Conn; send chan string; receive chan string }
func main() {
    if listener, err := net.Listen("tcp", "0.0.0.0:4242"); err == nil {
        master := make(chan string, 100);
        clients := vector.New(0);
        go runServer(master, clients);
        for {
            if conn, err := listener.Accept(); err == nil {
                c := client{ conn, master, make(chan string, 100) };
                clients.Push(c);
                go runClient(c);
            } else { break } } } }
func runServer(master chan string, clients *vector.Vector) {
    for { 
        message := <-master;
        clients.Do(func (c interface{}) { c.(client).receive <- message }); } }
func runClient(c client) {
    input := make(chan string, 10);
    go readLines(c, input);
    for {
        select {
        case inMessage := <-input: c.send <- inMessage;
        case outMessage := <-c.receive: c.conn.Write(strings.Bytes(outMessage));
        } } }
func readLines(c client, input chan string) {
    reader := bufio.NewReader(c.conn);
    for { if line, err := reader.ReadString('\n'); err == nil 
            { input <- line; } else { break } } }

Build and run with:

$ 6g server.go
$ 6l -o server server.6
$ ./server

And then in a few other terminals, connect with

$ nc localhost 4242 

I really like go's channels and the select statement, so here's something that shows how easy it is to express the "go and get as many things as possible within a certain time" concept.

This generates as many random numbers as possible within 300 milliseconds and returns the biggest one generated in that time.

package main

import (
  "fmt"
  "math/rand"
  "time"
)

func main() {
  timeout := time.After(300 * time.Millisecond)
  numbers := make(chan int) // This channel will be used 
  var numberCount int = 0
  var maxNumber int = 0

  // Start putting random numbers on the numbers channel
  go func() {
    for {
      numbers <- rand.Int()
    }
  }()

  for {
    select {
    case <- timeout:
      fmt.Printf("%v numbers generated. Max number found: %v.\n", numberCount, maxNumber)
      return

    case number := <- numbers:
      numberCount++
      if number > maxNumber {
        maxNumber = number
      }
    }
  }
}