Lua Academy · Lesson

Producer-Consumer Pattern

Implement a producer-consumer pipeline using coroutines.

The Pattern Explained

The producer-consumer pattern with coroutines: the producer generates data and yields each item; the consumer receives items one at a time. Neither needs to know the other's implementation — they communicate through yield/resume. This decouples data generation from data processing.

local function makeProducer(items)
  return coroutine.create(function()
    for _, item in ipairs(items) do
      coroutine.yield(item)
    end
  end)
end

local function consume(producer)
  while true do
    local ok, item = coroutine.resume(producer)
    if not ok or item == nil then break end
    print("Processing:", item)
  end
end

consume(makeProducer({10, 20, 30, 40}))

Infinite Producer

A producer coroutine can yield an infinite sequence. The consumer controls when to stop. This is perfect for streaming data sources: sensor readings, log events, generated sequences.

local function primes()
  return coroutine.wrap(function()
    local function isPrime(n)
      if n<2 then return false end
      for i=2, math.floor(math.sqrt(n)) do
        if n%i==0 then return false end
      end
      return true
    end
    local n = 2
    while true do
      if isPrime(n) then coroutine.yield(n) end
      n = n + 1
    end
  end)
end

local gen = primes()
for i = 1, 10 do
  io.write(gen() .. " ")
end
print()  -- 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29

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