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 I/O packages in Go

The io package is for performing primitive file I/O operations, whereas the bufio package is for executing buffered I/O.

In buffered I/O, the operating system uses an intermediate buffer during file read and write operations in order to reduce the number of filesystem calls. As a result, buffered input and output is faster and more efficient.

Additionally, you can use some of the functions of the fmt package to write text to a file. Note that the flag package will be also used in this chapter as well as in all the forthcoming ones where the developed utilities need to support command-line flags.

The io package

The io package offers functions that allow you to write to or read from files. Its use will...