[go] Read text file into string array (and write)

The ability to read (and write) a text file into and out of a string array is I believe a fairly common requirement. It is also quite useful when starting with a language removing the need initially to access a database. Does one exist in Golang?
e.g.

func ReadLines(sFileName string, iMinLines int) ([]string, bool) {

and

func WriteLines(saBuff[]string, sFilename string) (bool) { 

I would prefer to use an existing one rather than duplicate.

func readToDisplayUsingFile1(f *os.File){
    defer f.Close()
    reader := bufio.NewReader(f)
    contents, _ := ioutil.ReadAll(reader)
    lines := strings.Split(string(contents), '\n')
}

or

func readToDisplayUsingFile1(f *os.File){
    defer f.Close()
    slice := make([]string,0)

    reader := bufio.NewReader(f)

    for{

    str, err := reader.ReadString('\n')
    if err == io.EOF{
        break
    }

        slice = append(slice, str)
    }

You can use os.File (which implements the io.Reader interface) with the bufio package for that. However, those packages are build with fixed memory usage in mind (no matter how large the file is) and are quite fast.

Unfortunately this makes reading the whole file into the memory a bit more complicated. You can use a bytes.Buffer to join the parts of the line if they exceed the line limit. Anyway, I recommend you to try to use the line reader directly in your project (especially if do not know how large the text file is!). But if the file is small, the following example might be sufficient for you:

package main

import (
    "os"
    "bufio"
    "bytes"
    "fmt"
)

// Read a whole file into the memory and store it as array of lines
func readLines(path string) (lines []string, err os.Error) {
    var (
        file *os.File
        part []byte
        prefix bool
    )
    if file, err = os.Open(path); err != nil {
        return
    }
    reader := bufio.NewReader(file)
    buffer := bytes.NewBuffer(make([]byte, 1024))
    for {
        if part, prefix, err = reader.ReadLine(); err != nil {
            break
        }
        buffer.Write(part)
        if !prefix {
            lines = append(lines, buffer.String())
            buffer.Reset()
        }
    }
    if err == os.EOF {
        err = nil
    }
    return
}

func main() {
    lines, err := readLines("foo.txt")
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println("Error: %s\n", err)
        return
    }
    for _, line := range lines {
        fmt.Println(line)
    }
}

Another alternative might be to use io.ioutil.ReadAll to read in the complete file at once and do the slicing by line afterwards. I don't give you an explicit example of how to write the lines back to the file, but that's basically an os.Create() followed by a loop similar to that one in the example (see main()).

If you don't care about loading the file into memory, as of Go 1.16, you can use the os.ReadFile and bytes.Count functions.

package main

import (
    "log"
    "os"
    "bytes"
)

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

    n := bytes.Count(data, []byte{'\n'})

    fmt.Printf("input.txt has %d lines\n", n)
}

Cannot update first answer.
Anyway, after Go1 release, there are some breaking changes, so I updated as shown below:

package main

import (
    "os"
    "bufio"
    "bytes"
    "io"
    "fmt"
    "strings"
)

// Read a whole file into the memory and store it as array of lines
func readLines(path string) (lines []string, err error) {
    var (
        file *os.File
        part []byte
        prefix bool
    )
    if file, err = os.Open(path); err != nil {
        return
    }
    defer file.Close()

    reader := bufio.NewReader(file)
    buffer := bytes.NewBuffer(make([]byte, 0))
    for {
        if part, prefix, err = reader.ReadLine(); err != nil {
            break
        }
        buffer.Write(part)
        if !prefix {
            lines = append(lines, buffer.String())
            buffer.Reset()
        }
    }
    if err == io.EOF {
        err = nil
    }
    return
}

func writeLines(lines []string, path string) (err error) {
    var (
        file *os.File
    )

    if file, err = os.Create(path); err != nil {
        return
    }
    defer file.Close()

    //writer := bufio.NewWriter(file)
    for _,item := range lines {
        //fmt.Println(item)
        _, err := file.WriteString(strings.TrimSpace(item) + "\n"); 
        //file.Write([]byte(item)); 
        if err != nil {
            //fmt.Println("debug")
            fmt.Println(err)
            break
        }
    }
    /*content := strings.Join(lines, "\n")
    _, err = writer.WriteString(content)*/
    return
}

func main() {
    lines, err := readLines("foo.txt")
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println("Error: %s\n", err)
        return
    }
    for _, line := range lines {
        fmt.Println(line)
    }
    //array := []string{"7.0", "8.5", "9.1"}
    err = writeLines(lines, "foo2.txt")
    fmt.Println(err)
}

Note: ioutil is deprecated as of Go 1.16.

If the file isn't too large, this can be done with the ioutil.ReadFile and strings.Split functions like so:

content, err := ioutil.ReadFile(filename)
if err != nil {
    //Do something
}
lines := strings.Split(string(content), "\n")

You can read the documentation on ioutil and strings packages.