OK, it looks like you simply copied the import block from the first StackOverflow result for "golang read file" (the giveaway is that the order of imports is in

OK, it looks like you simply copied the import block from the first StackOverflow result for "golang read file" (the giveaway is that the order of imports is in the same non-formatted order as the top answer). That question, and its answer are covering more than simply reading in a file into a buffer. The minimum is "os" and "io/ioutil" f, _ := os.Open("/etc/ttys") buff, _ := ioutil.ReadAll(f) Edit: and as @exch pointed out, I forgot there's an ioutil.ReadFile helper too of you don't actually need access to the file object again.