Linux command to create a file in a directory

How to Create a File in Linux

Knowing how to create a new file is an important skill for anyone using Linux on a regular basis. You can create a new file either from the command line or from the desktop file manager.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you various ways to quickly create a new file in Linux using the command line.

Before you Begin #

To create a new file you need to have write permissions on the parent directory. Otherwise, you will receive a permission denied error.

If you want to display the contents of a directory use the ls command .

Creating a File with touch Command #

The touch command allows us to update the timestamps on existing files and directories as well as creating new, empty files.

The easiest and most memorable way to create new, empty files is by using the touch command.

To create a new file simply run the touch command followed by the name of file you want to create:

If the file file1.txt doesn’t exist the command above will create it, otherwise, it will change its timestamps.

To create multiple files at once, specify the file names separated by space:

touch file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

Creating a File with the Redirection Operator #

Redirection allows you to capture the output from a command and send it as input to another command or file. There are two ways to redirect output to a file. The > operator will overwrite an existing file, while the >> operator will append the output to the file.

To create an empty zero-length file simply specify the name of the file you want to create after the redirection operator:

This is the shortest command to create a new file in Linux.

When creating a file using a redirection, be careful not to overwrite an important existing file.

Creating a File with cat Command #

The cat command is mainly used to read and concatenate files, but it can also be used for creating new files.

To create a new file run the cat command followed by the redirection operator > and the name of the file you want to create. Press Enter type the text and once you are done press the CRTL+D to save the files.

Creating a File with echo Command #

The echo command prints the strings that are passed as arguments to the standard output, which can be redirected to a file.

To create a new file run the echo command followed by the text you want to print and use the redirection operator > to write the output to the file you want to create.

If you want to create an empty simply use:

Creating a File using Heredoc #

Here document or Heredoc is a type of redirection that allows you to pass multiple lines of input to a command.

This method is mostly used when you want to create a file containing multiple lines of text from a shell script.

For example, to create a new file file1.txt you would use the following code:

cat file1.txtSome lineSome other lineEOF

The body of the heredoc can contain variables, special characters, and commands.

Creating a Large File #

Sometimes, for testing purposes, you might want to create a large data file. This is useful when you want to test the write speed of your drive or to test the download speed of your connection.

Using dd command #

The dd command is primarily used to convert and copy files.

To create a file named 1G.test with a size of 1GB you would run:

dd if=/dev/zero of=1G.test bs=1 count=0 seek=1G

Using fallocate command #

fallocate a command-line utility for allocating real disk space for files.

The following command will create a new file named 1G.test with a size of 1GB:

Conclusion #

In this tutorial, you learned how to create a new file in Linux from the command line using various commands and redirection.

If the command line is not your thing you can easily create a blank text file using the right-click menu in the File Manager.

If you have questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

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How To Create A File In Linux: Touch, Cat, Echo, Printf Command

A file is a container in a Linux-based system for storing information. Linux considers everything as a file and organizes all its data into files. Files are then organized into directories. Further, the directories are organized into tree-like structures called the filesystem. Partitions, hardware device drivers, and directories are all included in the definition of a file in addition to file creation, text files, file images, file details, and compiled programs.

Types of files in Linux

A file type helps us in identifying the type of content that is saved in the file. Linux supports six different types of files.

The different types of names of files present are :

Regular file: Regular or ordinary files store data of various content types such as text, audio, video, images, scripts, and programs. In Linux, regular files can be created with or without an extension.

Directory file: File systems use directories to organize files in a hierarchy. Directories are also files, but instead of storing data, they store the location of other files. Each directory entry stores the name and location of a single file.

Link file: Link files allow us to use a file with a different filename and from a different location. For this, we use link files. A link file is a pointer to another file. There are two types of links: a hard link and a symbolic or soft link.

Special file: Linux treats all hardware devices (such as hard drives, printers, monitors, terminal emulators, and CD/DVD drives) as special files. Linux places all special files or device files under the /dev directory. There are two types of special files: a character special file and a block special file.

Socket file: A socket is a communication endpoint that applications use to exchange data. Each application that provides services to other applications or remote clients uses a socket to accept connections. Each socket has an associated IP address and port number that allow it to accept connections from clients.

Named pipe file: Named pipe files are empty pipe files. The kernel processes named pipe files without writing them to the file system. Named pipe files can exist anywhere in the file system. They are also called the FIFO (First In First Out) files.

How to identify the type of file?

There are many ways to identify the type of file in Linux. The easiest way is to use the file command. To find the type of a file, specify the names of files as an argument in the current directory. Open your terminal window and run the following command:

The output of this command not only displays the type of the specified file in the current directory but also shows the type of content stored in the specified file.

Create a new file in Linux

There are various ways in which one can create a file in Linux with different names of files. You can create a file from the Terminal Window or you can use the Desktop File Manager to do so. You can create various files in Linux such as plain text files, file with echo, file with cat, file with ownership, file with printf, file with redirect, file without contents, sorted file, test6 files, and so on.

Create a new file using Terminal Window

1. Using the touch command

The touch command is the most commonly used command for creating a new file in Linux. To create a new file in the current directory, you need to run the touch command followed by the name of the file.

Command: $ touch abc.txt

This will create a file with the file name abc.

2. Using the cat command

Usually, we use the cat command to read the contents of a file; however, we can also use the cat command to create a new file. We can not edit files using cat commands.

To create a new file using cat, run the cat command and then use the redirection operator «>» followed by the name of the file. Now you will be prompted to insert file content into this newly created file. Type a line and then press «Ctrl+D» to save the file.

Command: $ cat > abcFile.txt

Hello Everyone this is my file!

The above command will create a new file with the file name «abcFile.txt» and save it with the file content «Hello Everyone this is my file».

3. Using the redirection operator

The redirection operator is added after the normal command is written. We can simply use the redirection operator «>» to create a new blank file in the current directory and save the file contents. Run the «>» operator followed by the name of the file.

The above command will create a new file with the file name «abcFile.txt».

4. Using the echo command

The echo command takes a string as an argument and displays it as output. The echo command is also one of the commonly used commands to create a Linux file. Open the terminal and run the following command:

Command: $ echo «This is the File name file1»

This is the File name file1

This will first create a blank text file file1 and save the given file name contents in it.

We can also redirect this output to a new file, such as −

Command: $ echo «This is the File name file3» > file3.txt

This will create a text file file3 and redirect the output to the new file.

5. Using the printf command

The printf command works just like the echo command with the only exception that the «printf» command provides additional formatting options that you can use to pass a formatted string as the argument and save the file content.

Command: $ printf ‘Studying hard will never fail you.\n’ > file2.txt

This will create an empty file with file name file2 and add the given content to the file.

6. Create a zip file and ignore the directory structure in Linux

In order to be able to zip files and ignore the directory structure that gets created with it, we can run the following command in the terminal:

Command: zip -j zipContent d1/file.txt d2/2.txt d2/3.txt

In the above command, we can notice the -j option which stands for “junk the path”, which will help you in ignoring the directory structure and make sure that you don’t get a directory structure mimicking the files.

Summary

From the above article, we can easily understand that creating files in Linux is very easy. It can be done both manually using the file manager or by using different commands in the terminal window. There are different types of files present in Linux and different methods or options through which we can create files in the Linux operating system.

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