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Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 16:39:42 -0500
From: parv <parv_fm@emailgroups.net>
To: Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20030404213942.GA20042@moo.holy.cow>
Mail-Followup-To: Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>,
	CARTER Anthony <a.carter@cordis.lu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
References: <200304041227.46615.a.carter@intrasoft.lu>
	<Pine.GSO.4.44.0304041536440.14291-100000@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk>
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cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: cleaning out files
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in message
<Pine.GSO.4.44.0304041536440.14291-100000@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk>,
wrote Jan Grant thusly...
>
> On Fri, 4 Apr 2003, CARTER Anthony wrote:
> 
> > How do I clean the contents of text files without actually
> > removing the files?
> 
> man 1 truncate
> 
> This is a command-line utility that directly wraps the appropriate
> system call.

Some other ways are (bourne shell)...

  cat /dev/null > file
  > file

...w/ above three methods, you would/should not have problem w/
binary files too, unlike the "echo -n" method.


  - parv

--