Creating and Writing to Files

The Go language provides support in various ways to create and write to new files. We will examine some of the most common ways in which this is performed.

The os package provides a simple way in which to create a file. For those who are familiar with the touch command from the Unix world, it is similar to this. Here is the signature of the function:

func Create(name string(*File, error)

The function will create an empty file just like the touch command. It is important to note that if it already exists, then it will truncate the file.

The Create function from the os package input parameter is the name of the file and the location that you want to create. If successful, it will return a File type. It is worth noting that the File type satisfies the io.Write and io.Read interfaces. This is important to know for later in the chapter:

package main
import (
  "fmt"
  "os"
)
func main() {
  f...