BASH shell: How to create empty temporary files quickly
Posted by Vivek Gite
[Last updated: May 15, 2007]
Use the any one of the following command to create empty files. The first command is special as it use the redirection operator >, the redirection refers to the standard output. So you are creating a new file or destroying existing file:
$ > /tmp/filename
$ touch > /tmp/newfilename
$ echo "" > /tmp/filename
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The first command works fine. It creates a neat and empty file.
Second command does not work, “touch” is a command the file is the only parameter. It should not use a redirect as shown above.
touch /tmp/newfilename
Since this is a command it also works consistently no matter what shell interpreter someone might be using.
The third one is missing a -n on the echo to prevent the newline from being sent to the file making it less than empty.
echo -n “” > /tmp/filename
use “mktemp /tmp/tempfile.XXXXXXXXX” to make a secure tempory file and avoid exploits
mktemp! wow! Some time ago I wrote my own utility which do the same as mktemp.. shit
how we create a empty shell??