Bash Create Files

1. Creating Empty Files with touch

The touch command is primarily used to change the access and modification timestamps of a file. However, if the specified file does not exist, touch will create an empty file with that name. This makes it ideal for creating placeholder files.

touch my-file.txt

If my-file.txt already exists, its timestamps will be updated to the current time. If it doesn't exist, it will be created as an empty file.

To verify whether the file's timestamps were actually updated, you can use the stat command.

stat my-file.txt
 
# output:
#   File: my-file.txt
#   Size: 0         	Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   regular empty file
# Device: 259,5	Inode: 7128669     Links: 1
# Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--)  Uid: ( 1000/   lxxxv)   Gid: ( 1000/   lxxxv)
# Access: 2025-07-05 15:12:06.015863578 +0600
# Modify: 2025-07-05 15:12:06.015863578 +0600
# Change: 2025-07-05 15:12:06.015863578 +0600
# Birth: 2025-07-05 15:11:53.152051790 +0600

Creating Multiple Empty Files At Once

touch file1.txt file2.log report.pdf

Options with touch

• -a - Update only when the file was last read
• -m - Update only when the file was last changed
• -t - Set the timestamp to a specific time
• -c - Do not create any files

Learn more about these options

2. Creating Files with Content using Redirection

The most common way to create a file and populate it with content in one go is by using output redirection operators (>, >>).

• > (Redirection / Overwrite): This operator redirects the standard output of a command to a file. If the file exists, its content will be overwritten. If the file does not exist, it will be created.

  bash

  echo "Hello, learner." > welcome.txt
  echo "Hello, learner again." > welcome.txt
  cat welcome.txt
  # Output: Hello, learner again.

• >>(Append Redirection): This operator redirects the standard output of a command to a file. If the file exists, the new content will be appended to the end of the file. If the file does not exist, it will be created.

  bash

  echo "First line of text." > logfile.txt # Create and write
  echo "Second line appended." >> logfile.txt # Append
  echo "Third line also appended." >> logfile.txt # Append
  cat logfile.txt
  # Output:
  # First line of text.
  # Second line appended.
  # Third line also appended.