In Linux, we can create an empty file using ‘touch‘ command. There’s no equivalent command for touch in Windows OS. However, we can still create zero byte files using the command fsutil.
The syntax of fsutil command for creating a file is:
fsutil file createnew filename requiredSize
Below is the command you can run to create a empty text file.
fsutil file createnew filename 0
Example:
C:\>fsutil file createnew emptyfile.txt 0 File C:\emptyfile.txt is created C:\>dir emptyfile.txt 02/06/2012 10:50 PM 0 emptyfile.txt C:\>
The above command can be run from a batch file also. It works on all Windows editions: XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2008.
‘fsutil‘ command should be run from elevated administrator command prompt. Otherwise, you would get the below error message.
c:\>fsutil file createnew emptyfile.txt 0 The FSUTIL utility requires that you have administrative privileges.
Using echo command
In Linux, we can use echo command also to create empty text files. This command is available in Windows also.
But using ‘echo’ we can’t create empty files. See below.
c:\> echo > newfile.txt c:\> c:\>dir newfile.txt 02/06/2012 10:47 PM 13 newfile.txt c:\>
As you can see, it has created a file of size 13 bytes.
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Hi
We can use the “TYPE” command also to create an empty file in Windows from the CMD, and it doesn’t require the administrative privileges unlike the fsutil command. below is the command you can run to create an empty file. (for example: empty.txt)
C:\>type nul > empty.txt
thank you…it worked!!!!
hello,
your explaining is very helpful. but how to create file names with spaces in them?
thanks!
People seem to be ignoring an old bug in Windows that still exists, fortunately:
The command: echo 2> filename.txt
will create zero-byte ” filename.txt ”
and
the command echo 2> “file name.txt”
will create zerobyte file: ” file name.txt ”
check it out
You need to wrap the file name in double quotes. For example
In dos we were using basic command copy with con argument, and something like EOF from unix. : )
C:\>copy config.sys + con
config.sys
con
shell=c:\command.com c:\ /p /e:512
^z
how do you now put data on the file like insted of it empty have it create a txt file with hello in it ????
type nul > empty.txt
echo hello >> empty.txt
copy /y nul empty.txt
also works.