Kotlin: Coroutines scope vs Coroutine context

Question

Can anyone explain the difference between them? I think scope provides a reference(e.g. Job) to cancel them and context provides a reference to underlying thread. Is that so

Answer 1

CoroutineScope has-a CoroutineContext.

For example if you have:

runBlocking { // defines coroutineScope

    launch(Dispatchers.Default) { //inherits coroutineScope but changes context

    }
}

runBlocking defines a CoroutineScope (learn about it here) which launch inherits. The context is being overridden by explicitly specifying a dispatcher here. If you look at the definition of launch, you can see that it takes an optional CoroutineContext:

public fun CoroutineScope.launch(
    context: CoroutineContext = EmptyCoroutineContext,
    ...
)

Another part of the context would be the coroutine's name:

launch(CoroutineName("launchMe") + Dispatchers.Default) {
    println("")
}