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15.2. Instead of Removing a File, Empty It

Sometimes you don't want to remove a file completely -- you just want to empty it:

Well, you get the idea by now.

How can you empty a file? Watch out: when some editors say that a file has "no lines," they may still append a newline character when writing the file. Just one character still takes a block of disk space to store. Here are some better ways to get a properly empty file:

You can also "almost" empty the file, leaving just a few lines, this way:

tail Section 12.8

% tail afile > tmpfile
% cat tmpfile > afile
% rm tmpfile

That's especially good for log files that you never want to delete completely. Use cat and rm, not mv -- mv will break any other links to the original file (afile) and replace it with the temporary file.

-- JP



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