Readers

The io package specifies the io.Reader interface, which represents the read end of a stream of data.

The io.Reader interface has a Read method as follows:

func (T) Read(b []byte) (n int, err error)

Read populates the given byte slice with data and returns the number of bytes populated and an error value. It returns an io.EOF error when the stream ends.

Example

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"io"
	"strings"
)

func main() {
	r := strings.NewReader("Hello, Reader!")

	b := make([]byte, 8)
	for {
		n, err := r.Read(b)
		fmt.Printf("n = %v err = %v b = %v\n", n, err, b)
		fmt.Printf("b[:n] = %q\n", b[:n])
		if err == io.EOF {
			break
		}
	}
}

n = 8 err = <nil> b = [72 101 108 108 111 44 32 82]
b[:n] = "Hello, R"
n = 6 err = <nil> b = [101 97 100 101 114 33 32 82]
b[:n] = "eader!"
n = 0 err = EOF b = [101 97 100 101 114 33 32 82]
b[:n] = ""