Why does Node.js' fs.readFile() return a buffer instead of string?

Question

I'm trying to read the content of test.txt(which is on the same folder of the Javascript source) and display it using this code:

var fs = require("fs");  fs.readFile("test.txt", function (err, data) {     if (err) throw err;     console.log(data); }); 

The content of the test.txt was created on nano:

Testing Node.js readFile()

And I'm getting this:

Nathan-Camposs-MacBook-Pro:node_test Nathan$ node main.js <Buffer 54 65 73 74 69 6e 67 20 4e 6f 64 65 2e 6a 73 20 72 65 61 64 46 69 6c 65 28 29> Nathan-Camposs-MacBook-Pro:node_test Nathan$  

Answer 1

From the docs:

If no encoding is specified, then the raw buffer is returned.

Which might explain the <Buffer ...>. Specify a valid encoding, for example utf-8, as your second parameter after the filename. Such as,

fs.readFile("test.txt", "utf8", function(err, data) {...}); 

Answer 2

Try:

    fs.readFile("test.txt", "utf8", function(err, data) {...}); 

Basically, you need to specify the encoding.