How does a mutex.Lock() know which variables to lock?

Question

I\'m a go-newbie, so please be gentle.

So I\'ve been using mutexes in some of my code for a couple weeks now. I understand the concept behind it: lock access to a certa

Answer 1

lock access to a certain resource, interact with it (read or write), and then unlock it for others again.

Basically yes.

What puzzles me here is that there doesn't seem to be any connection between the mutex and the value it is supposed to lock.

Mutex is just a mutual exclusion object that synchronizes access to a resource. That means, if two different goroutines want to lock the mutex, only the first can access it. The second goroutines now waits indefinitely until it can itself lock the mutex. There is no connection to variables whatsoever, you can use mutex however you want. For example only one http request, only one database read/write operation or only one variable assignment. While i don't advice the usage of mutex for those examples, the general idea should become clear.

but looking at this code it seems to somehow lock the whole program into doing only the lines below the lock, until the unlock is ran again.

Not the whole program, only every goroutine who wants to access the same mutex waits until it can.

I suppose that means that all the other goroutines are paused for a moment until the unlock is ran again.

No, they don't pause. They execute until they want to access the same mutex.

If you want to group your mutex specifically with a variable, why not create a struct?