seniorGolang

How to read very large files in Go without OOM errors.

Updated Apr 28, 2026

Short answer

To handle files larger than available RAM, use streaming techniques via the io.Reader interface and bufio.Scanner.

Deep explanation

os.ReadFile loads the entire file into a byte slice, destroying memory if the file is 10GB. Instead, bufio.Scanner or bufio.Reader reads the file line-by-line (or chunk-by-chunk) into a small, fixed-size buffer, keeping the application's memory footprint tiny and flat.

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