Convert []string to []byte

Question

I am looking to convert a string array to a byte array in GO so I can write it down to a disk. What is an optimal solution to encode and decode a string array ([]string

Answer 1

The gob package will do this for you http://godoc.org/encoding/gob

Example to play with http://play.golang.org/p/e0FEZm-qiS

same source code is below.

package main

import (
    "bytes"
    "encoding/gob"
    "fmt"
)

func main() {
    // store to byte array
    strs := []string{"foo", "bar"}
    buf := &bytes.Buffer{}
    gob.NewEncoder(buf).Encode(strs)
    bs := buf.Bytes()
    fmt.Printf("%q", bs)

    // Decode it back
    strs2 := []string{}
    gob.NewDecoder(buf).Decode(&strs2)
    fmt.Printf("%v", strs2)
}