Skip to content
All Posts

Fast Ways to Empty a File on Linux

A quick reference to shell redirection and utilities that clear file contents without removing the file itself.

37 wordsView all posts with this tag linuxView all posts with this tag shell

Fast ways to empty a file

Terminal window
echo "" > filename
echo /dev/null > filename
echo > filename
cat /dev/null > filename
: > filename # `:` is a placeholder and produces no output.
> filename

Originally published on SegmentFault.