Question

In the Go programming language, why after importing a package do I still have to prefix a method within that package with the package name?

i.e.

import "io/ioutil"

func main() { 
    content, err = iotuil.ReadFile("somefile.txt")
    // etc..
}

Isn’t this redundant? In Java, for example, you can do things like importing Files.readAllLines etc without having Files imported.

Answer 1

I guess this doesn’t really answer your question, but if you want, you can actually call the methods without explicitly stating the package – just import with a . in front of the names (but this is not recommended; see below):

package main

import (
  . "fmt"
  . "io/ioutil"
)

func main () {
  content, err := ReadFile("testfile")
  if err != nil {
    Println("Errors")
  }
  Println("My file:\n", string(content))
}

Note @jimt’s comment below – this practice is not advised outside of tests as it could cause name conflicts with future releases. Also, definitely agree with @DavidGrayson’s point of being nicer to read/see where things come from.