The thread-safe map

In concurrent programming, safely managing access to shared data structures is crucial to avoid race conditions and ensure consistency. Go’s standard library provides a powerful tool for concurrent map access – the sync.Map type. Unlike the regular Map type, sync.Map is specifically designed to be used concurrently without the need for external synchronization.

The sync.Map type is part of the sync package and provides fine-grained locking internally to allow multiple readers and a single writer to access a map concurrently without blocking operations. This makes it suitable for scenarios where you have multiple Goroutines that need to read or modify a map concurrently.

Let’s look at an exercise showcasing the utility of sync.Map.

Exercise 18.13 – counting how many times random numbers are between 0 and 9 using sync.Map

Suppose we want to count how many times random numbers fall between the values of zero and nine in a concurrent...