Working with File system in Go

Package os contains useful functions for working with file system.

os - The Go Programming Language

Open() 

• opens the named file for reading (O_RDONLY mode).

OpenFile() 

• opens file in a specified mode set via flag e.g.  O_RDWR or O_WRONLY.

Create() 

• creates or truncates the named file
• If the file already exists, it is truncated. 
• If the file does not exist, it is created. 
• Methods on the returned File can be used for I/O; the associated file descriptor has mode O_RDWR.

Truncate() function:

• requires file to be opened in mode which allows writing into it.
• if specified size is 0 deletes the content of the file and sets its size to 0.

Writing to files

Go by Example: Writing Files

Without buffering:

f, err := os.Create("/tmp/test.txt")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
defer f.Close()
f.WriteString("some text!\n")


WriteString() under the hood calls system function write():

r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_WRITE, uintptr(fd), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(p)))

write() belongs to the group of Unix unbuffered file I/O functions (together with open, close, read, lseek...).

From FILE I/O:
They are part of the POSIX standard for UNIX programming, not part of ANSI C. Unlike the standard I/O routines provided by ANSI C (such as fscanf and fprintf which store the data they read in buffers) these functions are unbuffered I/O. They invoke a system call in the kernel, and will be called by the standard ANSI C function calls in the UNIX environment.

With buffering:

f, err := os.Create("/tmp/test.txt")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
defer f.Close()
w := bufio.NewWriter(f)
w.WriteString("some text!\n")
w.Flush()