使用字节包而不是字符串有什么好处？

Question

http://play.golang.org/p/CZTmhNepkM

Can somebody explain why we need bytes? For example on the go playgound, I am doing the same thing but strings package is easier than bytes to use. Why would someone need bytes package for HasSuffix features while we have strings package?

 strings.HasSuffix(word, "ed")
 bytes.HasSuffix(word_byte, []byte("ed"))

Answer 1

Somewhen before Go v1.0 there was no rune type. That's why some methods in the standard library that work with parts of strings or iterate over "characters" would take a byte slice (instead of a rune slice).

Since a lot of methods take a byte slice and to avoid constantly converting to string and back - some basic functions exist for both types.