Copying files in Go

Every operating system allows you to copy files because this is a very important and necessary operation. This section will show you how to copy files in Go now that you know how to read files!

There is more than one way to copy a file!

Most programming languages offer more than one way to create a copy of a file and Go is no exception. It is up to the developer to decide which approach to implement.

Note

The there is more than one way to do it rule applies to almost everything implemented in this book, but file copying is the most characteristic example of this rule because you can copy a file by reading it line by line, byte by byte, or all at once! However, this rule does not apply to the way Go likes to format its code!

Copying text files

There is no point in treating the copying of text files in a special way unless you want to inspect or modify their contents. As a result, the three techniques presented here will not differentiate between plain text and binary file copying...