How to create a file in Linux from terminal window?
How to create a file in Linux from terminal window?
Accepted Answer
Depending on what you want the file to contain:
touch /path/to/filefor an empty filesomecommand > /path/to/filefor a file containing the output of some command.eg: grep --help > randomtext.txt echo "This is some text" > randomtext.txtnano /path/to/fileorvi /path/to/file(orany other editor emacs,gedit etc)
It either opens the existing one for editing or creates & opens the empty file to enter, if it doesn't exist
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Create the file using cat
$ cat > myfile.txt
Now, just type whatever you want in the file:
Hello World!
CTRL-D to save and exit
There are several possible solutions:
Create an empty file
touch file
>file
echo -n > file
printf '' > file
The echo version will work only if your version of echo supports the -n switch to suppress newlines. This is a non-standard addition. The other examples will all work in a POSIX shell.
Create a file containing a newline and nothing else
echo '' > file
printf '\n' > file
This is a valid "text file" because it ends in a newline.
Write text into a file
"$EDITOR" file
echo 'text' > file
cat > file <<END \
text
END
printf 'text\n' > file
These are equivalent. The $EDITOR command assumes that you have an interactive text editor defined in the EDITOR environment variable and that you interactively enter equivalent text. The cat version presumes a literal newline after the \ and after each other line. Other than that these will all work in a POSIX shell.
Of course there are many other methods of writing and creating files, too.
How to create a text file on Linux:
- Using
touchto create a text file:$ touch NewFile.txt - Using
catto create a new file:$ cat NewFile.txt
The file is created, but it's empty and still waiting for the input from the user. You can type any text into the terminal, and once done CTRL-D will close it, or CTRL-C will escape you out. - Simply using
>to create a text file:$ > NewFile.txt - Lastly, we can use any text editor name and then create the file, such as:
nano MyNewFile vi MyNewFile NameOfTheEditor NewFileName