What is the difference between Go's sync and locks for ensuring the consistency and integrity of shared data among multiple goroutines in Go programs?
Go's sync package provides various synchronization primitives for ensuring the consistency and integrity of shared data among multiple goroutines in Go programs, whereas locks are a type of synchronization primitive provided by the **sync** package.
Locks are a way to synchronize access to shared resources or data by allowing only one goroutine to access the resource at a time. The **sync**
package provides several types of locks, such as **Mutex**
, **RWMutex**
, and **WaitGroup**
. The **Mutex**
is a mutual exclusion lock that allows only one goroutine to access the protected resource at a time, while the **RWMutex**
is a read-write lock that allows multiple goroutines to read from the protected resource simultaneously, but only one goroutine to write to the resource at a time. The **WaitGroup**
is used to synchronize multiple goroutines by waiting for them to complete their tasks before continuing.
In addition to locks, the **sync**
package also provides other synchronization primitives such as **Once**
, **Cond**
, and **Map**
. The **Once**
primitive allows a function to be executed only once, while the **Cond**
primitive is used for coordinating goroutines based on some condition. The **Map**
primitive is a concurrent map that can be safely accessed by multiple goroutines.
Overall, locks are a specific type of synchronization primitive provided by the **sync**
package, while the **sync**
package provides a range of other primitives that can be used for synchronization and coordination of shared resources and data among multiple goroutines.