

I've tried safe mode, deleting it with a command prompt both elevated and not, powershell, as well as third party programs. After screenshotting it, I can't delete the file. You can also empty a file by deleting all lines in Vim editor. About an hour ago, I created a text file on my desktop and renamed it to 'My fault.ogg' as a joke for a meme. You can also use the famous /dev/null and combine with the cat command to clear a log file: cat /dev/null > file.logĪnd if you don’t have enough permissions for any of the above commands, this is the sure shot but a little dirty way to achieve it: touch newfile You can also use echo command in this way: echo "" > filename Method 4: Use /dev/null to clear a file You can also use this command to clear a file: true > filename Method 3: Using echo command to empty file in LinuxĪnother way to empty a file is via echo command in Linux: echo > filename While the above works only in Bash Shell, you can use a similar command for other shells: :> filename If the file is not in use, it will work in Bash: > filename

The simplest way to empty a file is to use the command below. When you use -s 0, it means you adjusted the file size to 0 bytes. In the above command, -s is used to set/adjust the size (in bytes) of the file. The safest way to truncate a log file is using the truncate command. Method 1: Truncate a file using truncate command There are several ways you can empty a file without actually deleting the file.
#LINUX DELETE ZERO BYTE FILES HOW TO#
So, how do you empty a file in Linux? How to clear a file from all of its content without deleting the actual file? 4 ways to empty a file in Linux Instead of creating a new empty file, you can delete its content. It won’t be the same file, the timestamp (atime, mtime etc) will be different along with other file permissions. One not so clean way would be to remove the file and then create a new file. This often happens when you have huge log files and How would you do that? You’ll find yourself in situations where you need to empty a file.
