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

Let's make a Go 1-compatible list of all the ways to read and write files in Go.

Because file API has changed recently and most other answers don't work with Go 1. They also miss bufio which is important IMHO.

In the following examples I copy a file by reading from it and writing to the destination file.

Start with the basics

package main

import (
    "io"
    "os"
)

func main() {
    // open input file
    fi, err := os.Open("input.txt")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    // close fi on exit and check for its returned error
    defer func() {
        if err := fi.Close(); err != nil {
            panic(err)
        }
    }()

    // open output file
    fo, err := os.Create("output.txt")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    // close fo on exit and check for its returned error
    defer func() {
        if err := fo.Close(); err != nil {
            panic(err)
        }
    }()

    // make a buffer to keep chunks that are read
    buf := make([]byte, 1024)
    for {
        // read a chunk
        n, err := fi.Read(buf)
        if err != nil && err != io.EOF {
            panic(err)
        }
        if n == 0 {
            break
        }

        // write a chunk
        if _, err := fo.Write(buf[:n]); err != nil {
            panic(err)
        }
    }
}

Here I used os.Open and os.Create which are convenient wrappers around os.OpenFile. We usually don't need to call OpenFile directly.

Notice treating EOF. Read tries to fill buf on each call, and returns io.EOF as error if it reaches end of file in doing so. In this case buf will still hold data. Consequent calls to Read returns zero as the number of bytes read and same io.EOF as error. Any other error will lead to a panic.

Using bufio

package main

import (
    "bufio"
    "io"
    "os"
)

func main() {
    // open input file
    fi, err := os.Open("input.txt")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    // close fi on exit and check for its returned error
    defer func() {
        if err := fi.Close(); err != nil {
            panic(err)
        }
    }()
    // make a read buffer
    r := bufio.NewReader(fi)

    // open output file
    fo, err := os.Create("output.txt")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    // close fo on exit and check for its returned error
    defer func() {
        if err := fo.Close(); err != nil {
            panic(err)
        }
    }()
    // make a write buffer
    w := bufio.NewWriter(fo)

    // make a buffer to keep chunks that are read
    buf := make([]byte, 1024)
    for {
        // read a chunk
        n, err := r.Read(buf)
        if err != nil && err != io.EOF {
            panic(err)
        }
        if n == 0 {
            break
        }

        // write a chunk
        if _, err := w.Write(buf[:n]); err != nil {
            panic(err)
        }
    }

    if err = w.Flush(); err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
}

bufio is just acting as a buffer here, because we don't have much to do with data. In most other situations (specially with text files) bufio is very useful by giving us a nice API for reading and writing easily and flexibly, while it handles buffering behind the scenes.

Note: The following code is for older Go versions (Go 1.15 and before). Things have changed. For the new way, take a look at this answer.

Using ioutil

package main

import (
    "io/ioutil"
)

func main() {
    // read the whole file at once
    b, err := ioutil.ReadFile("input.txt")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }

    // write the whole body at once
    err = ioutil.WriteFile("output.txt", b, 0644)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
}

Easy as pie! But use it only if you're sure you're not dealing with big files.

New Way

Starting with Go 1.16, use os.ReadFile to load the file into memory, and use os.WriteFile to write to a file from memory (ioutil.ReadFile now calls os.ReadFile).

Be careful with the os.ReadFile because it reads the whole file into memory.

package main

import "os"

func main() {
    b, err := os.ReadFile("input.txt")
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    // `b` contains everything your file has.
    // This writes it to the Standard Out.
    os.Stdout.Write(b)

    // You can also write it to a file as a whole.
    err = os.WriteFile("destination.txt", b, 0644)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
}

you can use the fmt package also:

package main

import "fmt"

func main(){
    file, err := os.Create("demo.txt")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    defer file.Close()
    
    fmt.Fprint(file, name)
}

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.