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command-line
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🔍 See Original Answer on Ask Ubuntu ⧉ 🔗
URL:
https://askubuntu.com/q/1017769
Title:
How to clear text in a file?
ID:
/2018/03/20/How-to-clear-text-in-a-file_
Created:
March 20, 2018
Edited: June 12, 2020
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September 15, 2024
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Not the shortest answer but…
This answer is based on another from Super User. Although not the shortest bash command, truncate is the most readable for average newbies:
$ echo Hello > Hello.txt
$ echo World! >> Hello.txt
$ cat Hello.txt
Hello
World!
$ truncate -s 0 Hello.txt
$ ll Hello.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 rick rick 0 Mar 20 17:32 Hello.txt
Parameters used with truncate command here:
- “-s” set the size
- “0” size will be zero
Clear everything except first 10,000 bytes
An advantage of truncate is you can specify how much to keep, not just zero:
$ truncate -s 10000 Hello.txt
… will truncate everything after the first 10,000 bytes. This could be useful if a program went crazy and dumped many Megabytes of data into a small log file:
- Run the
truncatecommand for a reasonable larger normal size of 10K - Open the file with your text editor and press End
-
Highlight and PgUp to delete the remaining bytes that don’t belong (usually recognizable by ASCII garbage characters).