~/Efficient Use of Buffers in Go

Jun 15, 2021

Buffers in Go help you efficiently manage IO operations by reducing the number of system calls.

The bytes.Buffer type allows you to build and manipulate byte slices in memory. Use it when you need to concatenate or process data before writing it out.

Code Example:

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import (
    "bytes"
    "fmt"
)

func main() {
    var buf bytes.Buffer
    buf.WriteString("Hello, ")
    buf.WriteString("world!")
    fmt.Println(buf.String()) // Output: Hello, world!
}

For reading data, bufio.Reader and bufio.Writer wrap other IO types to add buffering. This is useful for performance when reading from or writing to files or network connections.

Buffered IO Example:

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import (
    "bufio"
    "os"
)

func main() {
    file, _ := os.Create("example.txt")
    writer := bufio.NewWriter(file)
    writer.WriteString("Buffered output\n")
    writer.Flush() // Ensure all data is written
    file.Close()
}

Use buffers to manage memory efficiently and improve the speed of your Go programs Learn More.