Example of using goroutines and channels to cleanly handle SIGINT

gistfile1.go

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"os"
	"os/signal"
	"time"
)

// create a single-member channel to hold signals from the OS
var osSignalChan = make(chan os.Signal, 1)

func main() {
	signal.Notify(osSignalChan, os.Interrupt)

	// run caughtInterrupt with a goroutine
	go caughtInterrupt()

	// loop forever
	for {
		fmt.Println("Doing some stuff...")
		time.Sleep(1000 * time.Millisecond)
	}
}

// reading from osSignalChan will block until there is something there to read,
// so the goroutine calling this function will block on the first line
func caughtInterrupt() {
	<-osSignalChan
	log.Println("Caught interrupt")
	log.Println("No longer doing stuff")
	os.Exit(0)
}