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From: alex@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix,net.bugs
Subject: Re: Creating a file in csh
Message-ID: <4854@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 17-Apr-85 14:44:13 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.4854
Posted: Wed Apr 17 14:44:13 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Apr-85 01:39:44 EST
References: <797@u1100a.UUCP> <254@tellab3.UUCP> <1581@ukma.UUCP> <1899@sdcrdcf.UUCP> <6177@Glacier.ARPA>
Reply-To: alex@ucla-cs.UUCP (Alex Quilici)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 24
Xref: watmath net.unix:4280 net.bugs:620
Summary: 

In article <6177@Glacier.ARPA> reid@Glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) writes:
>Aw, come on, folks. "touch filename" is the best way to create an empty file.
>All of these other schemes, involving echo and cat and what have you,
>require that the poor person reading the code stop and think about what is
>going on, but the "touch" program will (by definition) do nothing other than
>create it.
>-- 
>	Brian Reid	decwrl!glacier!reid
>	Stanford	reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA


Yes, but since "touch" won't truncate an existing file, and the
other methods (using "echo" or "cat") will, they have the advantage 
that they more closely approximate the behavior of "creat(2)."

In addition, because "echo" is a builtin in many shells and "touch"
isn't, using "echo" to create a file avoids the overhead of creating a
new process and is slightly more efficient.  On our 4.1bsd derivative,
"echo > foo" is twice as fast as "touch foo".  Admittedly, not a big
deal.

Alex Quilici
alex@ucla-locus
...{ihnp4, cepu, ucbvax}!ucla-locus!alex