Read text file into string array (and write)

The ability to read (and write) a text file into and out of a string array is I believe a fairly common requirement. It is also quite useful when starting with a language removing the need initially to access a database. Does one exist in Golang?
e.g.

func ReadLines(sFileName string, iMinLines int) ([]string, bool) {

and

func WriteLines(saBuff[]string, sFilename string) (bool) { 

I would prefer to use an existing one rather than duplicate.

As of Go1.1 release, there is a bufio.Scanner API that can easily read lines from a file. Consider the following example from above, rewritten with Scanner:

package main

import (
	"bufio"
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"os"
)

// readLines reads a whole file into memory
// and returns a slice of its lines.
func readLines(path string) ([]string, error) {
	file, err := os.Open(path)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	defer file.Close()

	var lines []string
	scanner := bufio.NewScanner(file)
	for scanner.Scan() {
		lines = append(lines, scanner.Text())
	}
	return lines, scanner.Err()
}

// writeLines writes the lines to the given file.
func writeLines(lines []string, path string) error {
	file, err := os.Create(path)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	defer file.Close()

	w := bufio.NewWriter(file)
	for _, line := range lines {
		fmt.Fprintln(w, line)
	}
	return w.Flush()
}

func main() {
	lines, err := readLines("foo.in.txt")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("readLines: %s", err)
	}
	for i, line := range lines {
		fmt.Println(i, line)
	}

	if err := writeLines(lines, "foo.out.txt"); err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("writeLines: %s", err)
	}
}

Note: ioutil is deprecated as of Go 1.16.

If the file isn't too large, this can be done with the ioutil.ReadFile and strings.Split functions like so:

content, err := ioutil.ReadFile(filename)
if err != nil {
    //Do something
}
lines := strings.Split(string(content), "\n")

You can read the documentation on ioutil and strings packages.

Cannot update first answer.
Anyway, after Go1 release, there are some breaking changes, so I updated as shown below:

package main

import (
    "os"
    "bufio"
    "bytes"
    "io"
    "fmt"
    "strings"
)

// Read a whole file into the memory and store it as array of lines
func readLines(path string) (lines []string, err error) {
    var (
        file *os.File
        part []byte
        prefix bool
    )
    if file, err = os.Open(path); err != nil {
        return
    }
    defer file.Close()

    reader := bufio.NewReader(file)
    buffer := bytes.NewBuffer(make([]byte, 0))
    for {
        if part, prefix, err = reader.ReadLine(); err != nil {
            break
        }
        buffer.Write(part)
        if !prefix {
            lines = append(lines, buffer.String())
            buffer.Reset()
        }
    }
    if err == io.EOF {
        err = nil
    }
    return
}

func writeLines(lines []string, path string) (err error) {
    var (
        file *os.File
    )

    if file, err = os.Create(path); err != nil {
        return
    }
    defer file.Close()

    //writer := bufio.NewWriter(file)
    for _,item := range lines {
        //fmt.Println(item)
        _, err := file.WriteString(strings.TrimSpace(item) + "\n"); 
        //file.Write([]byte(item)); 
        if err != nil {
            //fmt.Println("debug")
            fmt.Println(err)
            break
        }
    }
    /*content := strings.Join(lines, "\n")
    _, err = writer.WriteString(content)*/
    return
}

func main() {
    lines, err := readLines("foo.txt")
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println("Error: %s\n", err)
        return
    }
    for _, line := range lines {
        fmt.Println(line)
    }
    //array := []string{"7.0", "8.5", "9.1"}
    err = writeLines(lines, "foo2.txt")
    fmt.Println(err)
}

You can use os.File (which implements the io.Reader interface) with the bufio package for that. However, those packages are build with fixed memory usage in mind (no matter how large the file is) and are quite fast.

Unfortunately this makes reading the whole file into the memory a bit more complicated. You can use a bytes.Buffer to join the parts of the line if they exceed the line limit. Anyway, I recommend you to try to use the line reader directly in your project (especially if do not know how large the text file is!). But if the file is small, the following example might be sufficient for you:

package main

import (
    "os"
    "bufio"
    "bytes"
    "fmt"
)

// Read a whole file into the memory and store it as array of lines
func readLines(path string) (lines []string, err os.Error) {
    var (
        file *os.File
        part []byte
        prefix bool
    )
    if file, err = os.Open(path); err != nil {
        return
    }
    reader := bufio.NewReader(file)
    buffer := bytes.NewBuffer(make([]byte, 1024))
    for {
        if part, prefix, err = reader.ReadLine(); err != nil {
            break
        }
        buffer.Write(part)
        if !prefix {
            lines = append(lines, buffer.String())
            buffer.Reset()
        }
    }
    if err == os.EOF {
        err = nil
    }
    return
}

func main() {
    lines, err := readLines("foo.txt")
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println("Error: %s\n", err)
        return
    }
    for _, line := range lines {
        fmt.Println(line)
    }
}

Another alternative might be to use io.ioutil.ReadAll to read in the complete file at once and do the slicing by line afterwards. I don't give you an explicit example of how to write the lines back to the file, but that's basically an os.Create() followed by a loop similar to that one in the example (see main()).

func readToDisplayUsingFile1(f *os.File){
	defer f.Close()
	reader := bufio.NewReader(f)
	contents, _ := ioutil.ReadAll(reader)
	lines := strings.Split(string(contents), '\n')
}

or

func readToDisplayUsingFile1(f *os.File){
	defer f.Close()
	slice := make([]string,0)
	
	reader := bufio.NewReader(f)
	
	for{
	
	str, err := reader.ReadString('\n')
	if err == io.EOF{
		break
	}
	
		slice = append(slice, str)
	}

I prefer to write a simpler generic function to read from an io.Reader (the generic interface implemented by any readable data stream including files, memory buffers, strings and byte slices, http request body etc.

func ReadLines(r io.Reader) ([]string, error) {
	var lines []string
	s := bufio.NewScanner(r)
	for s.Scan() {
		lines = append(lines, s.Text())
	}
	if err := s.Err(); err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	return lines, nil
}

Example of its use with a string.

const data = `
line 1
line 2
line 3	
`

lines, _ := ReadLines(strings.NewReader(data))
fmt.Println(lines)

run it here: https://go.dev/play/p/NcbEIVmGXpX