When is it better to use Mutex, and when Channel?

Mutex and Channel in Go serve different synchronization purposes:

• Mutex — used to protect access to shared data to prevent race conditions. It locks a critical section, allowing only one goroutine to work with the resource at a time.

• Channel — used for communication between goroutines, data transfer, and synchronization through message exchange.

When to use:

• Mutex — if you just need to protect a shared variable or data structure from concurrent access.

• Channel — if you need to organize data transfer, events, or signals between goroutines, especially when order or asynchrony is important.

Example with Mutex:

var mu sync.Mutex
var counter int

mu.Lock()
counter++
mu.Unlock()

Example with Channel:

ch := make(chan int)
go func() {
  ch <- 42 // send
}()
val := <-ch // receive

In summary: Mutex — for data protection, Channel — for communication and synchronization via messages.