Comments on: How to empty or clear the contents of an existing UNIX file

By: MNS

MNS — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:55:38 +0000

Please follow the step to empty all the files. Here there can be some change of ";". It can be used or omitted according to the shell.

for i in 'ls';
do
echo "" >$i;
done

By: aesha

aesha — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 09:09:22 +0000

Thank you .This thing had worked out well for me

By: Bruce

Bruce — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:29:20 +0000

Wrong! This inserts a newline. `echo -n >file` is correct. Use `ls -l file` to show the difference.
These tips are important, as they do not close the file handle; useful for logs.

By: dinesh

dinesh — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:28:33 +0000

very helpful

By: Tech Blog

Tech Blog — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:41:25 +0000

I use a lot of

echo " " > blah.txt

But whatever works will do :)

By: Aleq

Aleq — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:03:57 +0000

i was using grep a > bla.txt o_O
it does empty the file, but you need to Ctrl+c after…

By: Quinn McHenry

Quinn McHenry — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:33:42 +0000

Nice.

By: Jacob

Jacob — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:30:25 +0000

echo -n > file.txt

By: Jesus E. Aneiros

Jesus E. Aneiros — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:28:41 +0000

cp /dev/null blah.txt

It will save you a t and a >.

By: MACMac

MACMac — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:14:11 +0000

You are correct about the touch command not zeroing out an existing file which was the point of the recipe.