How to check if a file or directory exists in Go

There are two main approaches you can adopt to solve this problem. If you want to open the file (or directory), you can use the os.Open method, pass in the file or directory name, then check the error with os.IsNotExist to see if it reports that the file or directory does not exist.

_, err := os.Open("filename.png")
if err != nil {
  if os.IsNotExist(err) {
    // File or directory does not exist
  } else {
    // Some other error such as missing permissions
  }
}

If you merely want to check the existence of a file or directory without opening it, you can use os.Stat instead of os.Open.

_, err := os.Stat("filename.png")
if err != nil {
  if os.IsNotExist(err) {
    // File or directory does not exist
  } else {
    // Some other error. The file may or may not exist
  }
}

Conclusion

As you can see, its easy to determine if a file is a directory exists in Go using the approaches discussed in this article. If you know of a better or safer way to achieve the intended result, please mention it in the comments.

Thanks for reading, and happy coding!

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