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Go Systems Programming

3.4 (8)

Go Systems Programming

3.4 (8)

Overview of this book

Go is the new systems programming language for Linux and Unix systems. It is also the language in which some of the most prominent cloud-level systems have been written, such as Docker. Where C programmers used to rule, Go programmers are in demand to write highly optimized systems programming code. Created by some of the original designers of C and Unix, Go expands the systems programmers toolkit and adds a mature, clear programming language. Traditional system applications become easier to write since pointers are not relevant and garbage collection has taken away the most problematic area for low-level systems code: memory management. This book opens up the world of high-performance Unix system applications to the beginning Go programmer. It does not get stuck on single systems or even system types, but tries to expand the original teachings from Unix system level programming to all types of servers, the cloud, and the web.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Getting Started with Go and Unix Systems Programming

Getting Started with Go and Unix Systems Programming

The structure of the book

What is systems programming?

About Go

Two useful Go tools

The various states of a Unix process

Exercises

Summary

Writing Programs in Go

Writing Programs in Go

Compiling Go code

Go environment variables

Using command-line arguments

User input and output

Go functions

Go data structures

Interfaces

Creating random numbers

Exercises

Summary

Advanced Go Features

Advanced Go Features

Error handling in Go

Pattern matching and regular expressions

Reflection

Comparing Go to other programming languages

Analysing software

Unreachable code

Avoiding common Go mistakes

Exercises

Summary

Go Packages, Algorithms, and Data Structures

Go Packages, Algorithms, and Data Structures

About algorithms

Sorting algorithms

Linked lists in Go

Trees in Go

Developing a hash table in Go

About Go packages

Garbage collection

Your environment

Go gets updated frequently!

Exercises

Summary

Files and Directories

Files and Directories

Useful Go packages

Command-line arguments revisited!

Dealing with directories

Dealing with files in Go

Developing find(1) in Go

The first version of find(1)

Using regular expressions

Exercises

Summary

File Input and Output

File Input and Output

About file input and output

Useful I/O packages in Go

File I/O operations

Copying files in Go

Developing wc(1) in Go

Interprocess communication

Sparse files in Go

Reading and writing data records

File locking in Go

A simplified Go version of the dd utility

Exercises

Summary

Working with System Files

Working with System Files

Which files are considered system files?

Logging in Go

Putting data at the end of a file

About log files

More pattern matching examples

Searching files revisited

Date and time operations

Rotating log files

Creating good random passwords

Another Go update

Exercises

Summary

Processes and Signals

Processes and Signals

About Unix processes and signals

Process management

Unix signals in Go

The kill(1) command

Improving file copying

Plotting data

Unix pipes in Go

Unix sockets in Go

RPC in Go

Programming a Unix shell in Go

Yet another minor Go update

Exercises

Summary

Goroutines - Basic Features

Goroutines - Basic Features

About goroutines

The sync Go packages

Pipelines

A better version of wc.go

Exercises

Summary

Goroutines - Advanced Features

Goroutines - Advanced Features

The Go scheduler

The sync Go package

The select keyword

Signal channels

Buffered channels

About timeouts

Channels of channels

Nil channels

Shared memory

The dWC.go utility revisited

Detecting race conditions

About GOMAXPROCS

Exercises

Summary

Writing Web Applications in Go

Writing Web Applications in Go

What is a web application?

About the net/http Go package

Developing web clients

A small web server

The html/template package

About JSON

Using MongoDB

A handy command-line utility

Exercises

Summary

Network Programming

Network Programming

About network programming

The net Go standard package

Unix sockets revisited

Performing DNS lookups

Developing a simple TCP server

Developing a simple TCP client

Developing a simple UDP server

Developing a simple UDP client

A concurrent TCP server

Remote procedure call (RPC)

Exercises

Summary

Error handling in Go

Errors happen all the time, so it is our job to both catch and handle them, especially when writing code that deals with sensitive system information and files. The good news is that Go has a special data type called error that helps signify erroneous states; if an error variable has a nil value, then there is no error situation.

As you saw in the addCLA.go program that was developed in the previous chapter, you can ignore the error variable that is returned by most Go functions using the _ character:

temp, _ := strconv.Atoi(arguments[i])

However, this is not considered good practice and should be avoided, especially on systems software and other kinds of critical software, such as server processes.

As you will see in Chapter 6, File Input and Output, even End of File (EOF) is a type of error that is returned when there is nothing left to read from a file...

CONTINUE READING

83

Tech Concepts

36

Programming languages

73

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