peterb@pbear.UUCP (06/17/85)
A while ago, somebody asked why people use "cat /dev/null > file" to create
empty files, and somebody retorted that touch does the same thing, and then
someone replied, "no touch just changes modify times, does no empty the file",
etc...
I was reading S.R.Bourne's "THe UNIX System", and Bourne covers one of the
simplest was of doing it under the bourne shell.
The command:
for i do >$i ; done
creates empty files for each parameter that is supplied, such that if a
file contains this command and has execute permissions, the following command
create alpha beta
will create the two empty files alpha and beta in the current directory and
ensure that they are empty.
Peter Barada
{ihnp4!inmet|{harvard|cca}!ima}!pbear!peterb