Spaceship Go

recover

Recover is a built-in function allows a program to manage behavior of a panicking goroutine. It is useful only inside a deferred function. It stops the panicking sequence by restoring normal execution and retrieves the error value passed to the call of panic. If recover is called outside the deferred function it will not stop a panicking sequence. In this case, or when the goroutine is not panicking, or if the argument supplied to panic was nil, recover returns nil. Thus the return value from recover reports whether the goroutine is panicking.

An example (https://blog.golang.org/defer-panic-and-recover) of the mechanisms of panic and defer:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    f()
    fmt.Println("Returned normally from f.")
}

func f() {
    defer func() {
        if r := recover(); r != nil {
            fmt.Println("Recovered in f", r)
        }
    }()
    fmt.Println("Calling g.")
    g(0)
    fmt.Println("Returned normally from g.")
}

func g(i int) {
    if i > 3 {
        fmt.Println("Panicking!")
        panic(fmt.Sprintf("%v", i))
    }
    defer fmt.Println("Defer in g", i)
    fmt.Println("Printing in g", i)
    g(i + 1)
}

// outputs
// Calling g.
// Printing in g 0
// Printing in g 1
// Printing in g 2
// Printing in g 3
// Panicking!
// Defer in g 3
// Defer in g 2
// Defer in g 1
// Defer in g 0
// Recovered in f 4
// Returned normally from f.

Note that the call to referred functions goes in the opposite direction. This is because the defer statement places the goroutine in the goroutine stack. And thus, they get popped in LIFO order.

The same example, but without calling recover inside a defer is presented below:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    f()
    fmt.Println("Returned normally from f.")
}

func f() {
//    defer func() {
//        if r := recover(); r != nil {
//            fmt.Println("Recovered in f", r)
//       }
//    }()
    fmt.Println("Calling g.")
    g(0)
    fmt.Println("Returned normally from g.")
}

func g(i int) {
    if i > 3 {
        fmt.Println("Panicking!")
        panic(fmt.Sprintf("%v", i))
    }
    defer fmt.Println("Defer in g", i)
    fmt.Println("Printing in g", i)
    g(i + 1)
}

// outputs
// Calling g.
// Printing in g 0
// Printing in g 1
// Printing in g 2
// Printing in g 3
// Panicking!
// Defer in g 3
// Defer in g 2
// Defer in g 1
// Defer in g 0

// AND NOW, this is different!

// panic: 4
// panic PC=0x2a9cd8
// [stack trace omitted]