Question

I am trying to take input from the keyboard and then store it in a text file but I am a bit confused on how to actually do it.

My current code is as follow at the moment:

// reads the file txt.txt 
bs, err := ioutil.ReadFile("text.txt")
if err != nil {
      panic(err)
}

// Prints out content
textInFile := string(bs)
fmt.Println(textInFile)

// Standard input from keyboard
var userInput string
fmt.Scanln(&userInput)

//Now I want to write input back to file text.txt
//func WriteFile(filename string, data []byte, perm os.FileMode) error

inputData := make([]byte, len(userInput))

err := ioutil.WriteFile("text.txt", inputData, )

There are so many functions in the “os” and “io” packages. I am very confused about which one I actually should use for this purpose.

I am also confused about what the third argument in the WriteFile function should be. In the documentation is says of type ” perm os.FileMode” but since I am new to programming and Go I am a bit clueless.

Does anybody have any tips on how to proced?
Thanks in advance,
Marie

Answer 1

// reads the file txt.txt 
bs, err := ioutil.ReadFile("text.txt")
if err != nil { //may want logic to create the file if it doesn't exist
      panic(err)
}

var userInput []string

var err error = nil
var n int
//read in multiple lines from user input
//until user enters the EOF char
for ln := ""; err == nil; n, err = fmt.Scanln(ln) {
    if n > 0 {  //we actually read something into the string
        userInput = append(userInput, ln)
    } //if we didn't read anything, err is probably set
}

//open the file to append to it
//0666 corresponds to unix perms rw-rw-rw-,
//which means anyone can read or write it
out, err := os.OpenFile("text.txt", os.O_APPEND, 0666)
defer out.Close() //we'll close this file as we leave scope, no matter what

if err != nil { //assuming the file didn't somehow break
    //write each of the user input lines followed by a newline
    for _, outLn := range userInput {
        io.WriteString(out, outLn+"\n")
    }
}

I’ve made sure this compiles and runs on play.golang.org, but I’m not at my dev machine, so I can’t verify that it’s interacting with Stdin and the file entirely correctly. This should get you started though.