Commands tagged create file (4)

  • If you want to create fast a very big file for testing purposes and you do not care about its content, then you can use this command to create a file of arbitrary size within less than a second. Content of file will be all zero bytes. The trick is that the content is just not written to the disk, instead the space for it is somehow reserved on operating system level and file system level. It would be filled when first accessed/written (not sure about the mechanism that lies below, but it makes the file creation super fast). Instead of '1G' as in the example, you could use other modifiers like 200K for kilobytes (1024 bytes), 500M for megabytes (1024 * 1024 bytes), 20G for Gigabytes (1024*1024*1024 bytes), 30T for Terabytes (1024^4 bytes). Also P for Penta, etc... Command tested under Linux. Show Sample Output


    3
    truncate --size 1G bigfile.txt
    ynedelchev · 2015-02-26 11:56:27 0
  • Create a bash script to change the modification time for each file in 'files.txt' such that they are in the same order as in 'files.txt' File name for bash script specified by variable, 'scriptName'. It is made an executable once writing into it has been completed. Show Sample Output


    1
    scriptName="reorder_files.sh"; echo -e '#!/bin/sh\n' > "${scriptName}"; cat files.txt | while read file; do echo "touch ${file}; sleep 0.5;" >> "${scriptName}"; done; chmod +x "${scriptName}";
    programmer · 2016-04-19 11:52:00 3
  • Create empty file


    0
    > filename
    TIT · 2012-03-08 23:17:05 0
  • When run on an existing file, alters it's creation date.


    0
    touch /path/to/file
    lolssl · 2015-09-22 16:49:22 0

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