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From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix.sco,comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: emptying a file and keeping its ownership
Message-ID: <1991Jan1.040621.27634@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 1 Jan 91 04:06:21 GMT
References: <1990Dec30.220722.29050@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <1990Dec31.214030.7816@athena.mit.edu>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Followup-To: comp.unix.xenix.sco
Distribution: na
Organization: North Coast Computer Resources (ncoast)
Lines: 25

As quoted from <1990Dec31.214030.7816@athena.mit.edu> by jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens):
+---------------
|   Several people have suggested using
|     > $FILE
| to truncate a file while retaining its old permissions.  This will work under
| sh or ksh or bash or other shells that allow null commands for redirection. 
| Unfortunately, csh and tcsh do not allow such null commands :-(.  Therefore,
+---------------

	% ls -s file
	4 file
	% echo > file
	% ls -s file
	0 file
	% _

Not that I like csh's echo behavior in this case, but it does get around the
"null command" problem.

++Brandon
-- 
Me: Brandon S. Allbery			    VHF/UHF: KB8JRR on 220, 2m, 440
Internet: allbery@NCoast.ORG		    Packet: KB8JRR @ WA8BXN
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