Break with label in Go

💻 Tech

In Go, break can have labels to break out of specific loops. The example below uses for with select statement inside it. The select statement waits for three channels: a sigChan for os.Signal, a timeout after 1 minute, and a done channel to signal the end of the program. The goal is to break the for loop once done is signaled.

// let's say this is updated somewhere in the program
done := make(chan bool, 1)

timeout := time.After(1 * time.Minute)

sigChan := make(chan os.Signal, 1)
signal.Notify(sigChan, syscall.SIGINT, syscall.SIGTERM)

forLoop:
for {
    select {
    case <-sigChan:
        fmt.Println("Received signal")
        // some action here
    case <-timeout:
        fmt.Println("Timeout")
        // some action here
    case <-done:
        fmt.Println("Done")
        // exit the for loop
        // with break without label, it would only exit the select statement and let the for loop continue
        break forLoop
    }
}