This post can explain and show you how to combine io.TeeReader() and io.Pipe together in Golang. You can easily use bytes.Buffer with io.TeeReader() easily according to the official documents in here.

But you will notice that you may encounter some issues if you choose to use io.Pipe . Here I am.

Notice: This post is for the beginners, not the well-knowledged Golang programmer.

Table of Contents

• Initial modification based on its example
• Fix the bug!

Initial modification based on its example

As a beginner, you may easily come up with these kind of modifications below.

func main() {
   r := strings.NewReader("some io.Reader stream to be read\n")

   pr, pw := io.Pipe()
   tee := io.TeeReader(r, pw)

   // create channel to synchronize
   done := make(chan bool)
   defer close(done)

   printall := func(r io.Reader) {
      b, err := ioutil.ReadAll(r)
      if err != nil {
         log.Fatal(err)
      }

      fmt.Printf("%+v: %s", reflect.TypeOf(r), b)
   }

   defer pw.Close()
   printall(tee)
   printall(pr)
}

If you run the code, you can get error message:

fatal error: all goroutines are asleep - deadlock!

This comes from that you are attempting this on the same thread, which will give you a panic hammer on your head.

Fix the bug!

You can easily fix it via small modifications and add synchronizations.

func main() {
	r := strings.NewReader("some io.Reader stream to be read\n")

	pr, pw := io.Pipe()
	tee := io.TeeReader(r, pw)

	// create channel to synchronize
	done := make(chan bool)
	defer close(done)

	printall := func(r io.Reader) {
		b, err := ioutil.ReadAll(r)
		if err != nil {
			log.Fatal(err)
		}

		fmt.Printf("%+v: %s", reflect.TypeOf(r), b)
	}
	go func() {
		printall(pr)
		done <- true
	}()

	go func() {
		defer pw.Close()

		printall(tee)
		done <- true
	}()


	// wait until both are done
	for c := 0; c < 2; c++ {
		<-done
	}
}

• done chan is added to make sure synchronizations happens correctly before main thread exits.

• pw.Close() must be performed inside another goroutine with printall(tr). This is because TeeReader returns a Reader that writes to w what it reads from r.

• Due to the existence of goroutine, you can change the order of two separate go func(){} unlike the example provided by io.TeeReader()

Hope this post does help you in some way.