Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Bash file truncation

Today I wanted to truncate a file from bash and discovered that using the dummy placeholder : worked a treat:

:>example-file-to-truncate.txt

..I've been using bash for years and completely overlooked this gem - I should have devoted more effort into reading the POSIX 1003.2 standard or the bash manual a long while ago...
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2 comments:

  1. Unknown18 November 2009 at 10:01

    Doesn't the following command achieve the same result?

    >example-file-to-truncate.txt

    ReplyDelete
  2. Colin Ian King19 November 2009 at 18:46

    @MrM, you're right, you win the optimal solution award!

    ReplyDelete