How to read/write from/to file using Go?

Question

I\'ve been trying to learn Go on my own, but I\'ve been stumped on trying read from and write to ordinary files.

I can get as far as inFile, _ := os.Open(INFIL

Answer 1

This is good version:

package main

import (
  "io/ioutil"; 
  )


func main() {
  contents,_ := ioutil.ReadFile("plikTekstowy.txt")
  println(string(contents))
  ioutil.WriteFile("filename", contents, 0644)
}

Answer 2

Just looking at the documentation it seems you should just declare a buffer of type []byte and pass it to read which will then read up to that many characters and return the number of characters actually read (and an error).

The docs say

Read reads up to len(b) bytes from the File. It returns the number of bytes read and an Error, if any. EOF is signaled by a zero count with err set to EOF.

Does that not work?

EDIT: Also, I think you should perhaps use the Reader/Writer interfaces declared in the bufio package instead of using os package.

Answer 3

With newer Go versions, reading/writing to/from file is easy. To read from a file:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "io/ioutil"
)

func main() {
    data, err := ioutil.ReadFile("text.txt")
    if err != nil {
        return
    }
    fmt.Println(string(data))
}

To write to a file:

package main

import "os"

func main() {
    file, err := os.Create("text.txt")
    if err != nil {
        return
    }
    defer file.Close()

    file.WriteString("test\nhello")
}

This will overwrite the content of a file (create a new file if it was not there).

Answer 4

Try this:

package main

import (
  "io"; 
  )


func main() {
  contents,_ := io.ReadFile("filename");
  println(string(contents));
  io.WriteFile("filename", contents, 0644);
}

Answer 5

[]byte is a slice (similar to a substring) of all or part of a byte array. Think of the slice as a value structure with a hidden pointer field for the system to locate and access all or part of an array (the slice), plus fields for the length and capacity of the slice, which you can access using the len() and cap() functions.

Here's a working starter kit for you, which reads and prints a binary file; you will need to change the inName literal value to refer to a small file on your system.

package main
import (
    "fmt";
    "os";
)
func main()
{
    inName := "file-rw.bin";
    inPerm :=  0666;
    inFile, inErr := os.Open(inName, os.O_RDONLY, inPerm);
    if inErr == nil {
        inBufLen := 16;
        inBuf := make([]byte, inBufLen);
        n, inErr := inFile.Read(inBuf);
        for inErr == nil {
            fmt.Println(n, inBuf[0:n]);
            n, inErr = inFile.Read(inBuf);
        }
    }
    inErr = inFile.Close();
}

Answer 6

The Read method takes a byte parameter because that is the buffer it will read into. It's a common Idiom in some circles and makes some sense when you think about it.

This way you can determine how many bytes will be read by the reader and inspect the return to see how many bytes actually were read and handle any errors appropriately.

As others have pointed in their answers bufio is probably what you want for reading from most files.

I'll add one other hint since it's really useful. Reading a line from a file is best accomplished not by the ReadLine method but the ReadBytes or ReadString method instead.