Go-like channels for .NET.

WARNING deprecated in favour of BusterWood.Channels

Calling new Channel<T>() creates an unbuffered Go channel, so can be used to synchronise threads. Calling new Channel<T>(capacity) creates an buffered channel with a fixed capacity queue of items.

Supported channels operations are:

• Send(T) which may block if a receiver is not ready (or the queue is full for QueuedChannel<T>)
• TrySend(T) which does not block and only sends if a reciever is ready (or the buffer is not full for buffered channels)
• Recv() which may block if a sender is not ready (or the queue is empty for QueuedChannel<T>)
• TryRecv(T) which does not block and only recieves if a sender is ready (or the buffer is not empty for buffered channels)
• Close() which tell recieves that no further messages will be sent

Channel<T> are also Enumerable<T>, so you can easily read all the items using a foreach. The enumeration finishes when the channel is closed via Close().

Recieves over one of many channels is support via the Select class, which is a bit like a Go select statement. Select supports:

• Recv() which may block if no sender is ready
• TryRecv(T) which does not block and only recieves if a sender is ready

NetChan can send and recieve up to 8 million messages per second on an Intel i7 (cica 2012).

The following show the results of a simple int channel producer and consumer on an Intel i7-2600S: