Go – Check if there is something to read on STDIN in Golang

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.

One line answer:

if val, ok := dict["foo"]; ok {
    //do something here
}

Explanation:

if statements in Go can include both a condition and an initialization statement. The example above uses both:

• initializes two variables - val will receive either the value of "foo" from the map or a "zero value" (in this case the empty string) and ok will receive a bool that will be set to true if "foo" was actually present in the map

• evaluates ok, which will be true if "foo" was in the map

If "foo" is indeed present in the map, the body of the if statement will be executed and val will be local to that scope.