Handling Files
The shell provides many file manipulation commands on the Linux filesystem. This section walks you through the basic shell commands you need to handle files.
Creating files
Every once in a while you run into a situation where you need to create an empty file. For example, sometimes applications expect a log file to be present before they can write to it. In these situations, you can use the touch
command to easily create an empty file:
$ touch test_one
$ ls -l test_one
-rw-rw-r-- 1 christine christine 0
May 21 14:17 test_one
$
The touch
command creates the new file you specify and assigns your username as the file owner. Notice in the preceding example that the file size is zero because the touch
command just created an empty file.
The touch
command can also be used to change the modification time. This is done without changing the file contents:
$ ls -l test_one
-rw-rw-r-- 1 christine christine 0 May 21 14:17
test_one
$ touch test_one
$ ls -l test_one
-rw-rw-r-- 1 christine...