Book Image

Go Systems Programming

Book Image

Go Systems Programming

Overview of this book

Go is the new systems programming language for Linux and Unix systems. It is also the language in which some of the most prominent cloud-level systems have been written, such as Docker. Where C programmers used to rule, Go programmers are in demand to write highly optimized systems programming code. Created by some of the original designers of C and Unix, Go expands the systems programmers toolkit and adds a mature, clear programming language. Traditional system applications become easier to write since pointers are not relevant and garbage collection has taken away the most problematic area for low-level systems code: memory management. This book opens up the world of high-performance Unix system applications to the beginning Go programmer. It does not get stuck on single systems or even system types, but tries to expand the original teachings from Unix system level programming to all types of servers, the cloud, and the web.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Useful Go packages

The single most important package that allows you to manipulate files and directories as entities is the os package, which we will use extensively in this chapter. If you consider files as boxes with contents, the os package allows you to move them, put them into the wastebasket, change their names, visit them, and decide which ones you want to use, whereas the io package, which will be presented in the next chapter, allows you to manipulate the contents of a box without worrying too much about the box itself!

The flag package, which you will see in a while, lets you define and process your own flags and manipulate the command-line arguments of a Go program.

The filepath package is extremely handy as it includes the filepath.Walk() function that allows you to traverse entire directory structures in an easy way.