Linux create file and write

How to create a file in Linux using the bash shell terminal

I am a new Linux system user. How do I create a file in Linux using the bash shell terminal? What is the fastest and easiest way to create a file in a Linux terminal?

Introduction – A file is nothing but a container in a Linux based system for storing information. For example, music stored in a file named foo.mp4. Similarly, my cat’s picture stored in kitten.jpg and so on. This page shows various methods to create a file in Linux using the terminal window.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	No
Requirements	Bash shell/terminal on Linux
Est. reading time	3 minutes

How to create a file in Linux from terminal window?

1. Create an empty text file named foo.txt:
   touch foo.bar
   OR
   > foo.bar
2. Make a text file on Linux:
   cat > filename.txt
3. Add data and press CTRL + D to save the filename.txt when using cat on Linux
4. Run shell command:
   echo ‘This is a test’ > data.txt
5. Append text to existing file in Linux:
   echo ‘yet another line’ >> data.txt

Let us see some examples for creating a text files on Linux operating systems.

How to create a text file using the cat command

To create a text file named sales.txt, type the following command and then press [Enter] key:
cat > sales.txt
Now type your lines of text. For example:

When done and you need to save and exit, press Ctrl + D to return to the bash shell prompt. To view file use cat or more command/less command:
cat sales.txt
more sales.txt

How to create a file in Linux from terminal window

How to create an empty text file using the touch command

Simply type any one of the following command:
> data.txt
OR
touch test.txt
Verify that empty files are created with the help of ls command:
ls -l data.txt test.txt

Creating a file in Linux using the echo or printf

Let us create a file called quote1.txt using echo command, enter:
echo «While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.» > quote1.txt
OR use the printf command printf ‘Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.\n’ > quote2.txt

Appending data

Use the the >> instead of > to append data to existing file and to avoid overwriting files. The syntax is:

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How to create a file in Linux using joe text editor

JOE is text editor. To create a file called delta.txt, type:
joe -help delta.txt
You will see help menu on screen. Next type something. To save the file and leave joe, by typing ^KX (press CTRL+K+X).

How to create a text file in Linux using vi / vim text editor

The vi / vim is another text editor. To create a file called purchase.txt, type:
vi purchase.txt
OR
vim purchase.txt
Press i to insert new text. To save the file and leave vi, type ESC + : + x (press ESC key, type : followed by x and [enter] key).

Conclusion

You learned various methods that allow you to create text files in a Linux or Unix/macOS terminal window quickly.

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How to Create a File in Linux Using Terminal

As we all know, Linux is an operating system mainly used by geeks and developers, who are mostly keyboard people and like to write commands instead of using a graphical user interface (GUI). Unlike the Windows operating system, where most of the work is done with a few clicks, Linux has commands for everything, such as basic file manipulation, compression or extraction of files, etc. These commands run on the Linux command line known as the terminal or shell. The terminal or shell is a utility in Linux that is responsible for running the commands. Today, I will introduce various methods that you can use to create a file in Linux using the terminal.

Introduction

In a world where a lot of work has already been put into improving UI/UX and the UI is so much more intuitive and powerful, the command line still has a lot of advantages over the GUI. Typically, Linux is an operating system used in servers and mostly used by technical users, such as developers. Their main requirement is to have more control over the system, need fast performance, scripting capabilities, and much more, which the GUI, unfortunately, cannot provide. In server environments such as data centers, we usually don’t have GUI installed on the servers because the GUI takes a lot of time to load and is basically meant for the end-users. So to be a good technical user, you should have a good command of the shell, also known as the terminal.

Here a few advantages of a command-line interface over graphical user interfaces:

• Control over the system.
• Provide ease for many tasks like rename thousands of files in bulk.
• The ability to use scripts.
• Less memory and faster performance.

Now I am going to share different methods through which you can create a file in Linux.

Create a file on Linux shell

In Linux, there are a lot of commands through which a user can create files. Each command has its own significance. Some of the most used are:

1. Using ‘cat’ command.
2. Using ‘touch’ command.
3. Using redirect ‘>’ symbol

We are going to discuss them one by one.

For this tutorial, I am using the Ubuntu flavor of the Linux Operating system. So the screenshot for the demo purpose will be based on Ubuntu. But all commands are available on other Linux Distributions like Debian and CentOS too.

1. Using cat command

The ‘cat’ command also known as “concatenate” command is one the most frequently used command in Linux OS. There are multiple functionalities of the ‘cat’ command which includes

• Creation of single or multiple files.
• View the content of the file on the command line
• Redirect output of one file on the terminal screen or in another file

However, in this tutorial, we are only focused on the creation of a file. So, let’s see how we can create a file by using ‘cat’ command.

Step 1: First of all, open Terminal by clicking on Ubuntu launcher and search for Terminal.

Step 2: Now click on the Terminal and wait for the terminal to open.

Step 3: By default, the terminal is on the ‘home’ location but to verify where the terminal is pointing right now we will use ‘pwd’ command. The ‘pwd’ will return the path to which the terminal is currently pointing. Right now, we are creating a file on the default location to which a terminal is pointing but if you want to create a file in some different location you can change the path by using ‘cd’ change directory command. The general syntax of cd command is “cd ‘path to folder’”.

Step 4: Now to create a file write a command “cat > filename.ext” where filename will be the name of your file and ext will be an extension of the file. E.g. in the demo, I’m using dummy.txt

Step 5: Once the command is executed, a text file is created in the default path with the name you have provided. In our case it is the file dummy.txt

Now you can see the cursor is blinking awaits input from the user. Basically, the command is asking to type the desired text you want to write to a file. If you want to keep the file empty just press “ctrl+D” or if you want to write the content to the file, type it and then press “ctrl+D”. The content has been saved to the file and you will be returned to the main terminal.

You can verify the text by opening the file as shown in the screenshot.

Congratulations! Your file has been created with ‘cat’ command.

Note: Before creating a new file make sure that the file is not already created. To ensure this you can use “ls” command.

2. Using touch command

In Linux operating system, every file has timestamp details like the last time the file is accessed or modified etc. Every time the file is accessed or modified this timestamp is updated. The ‘touch’ command is a utility of Linux which is used to create, change or modify the timestamp of the file.

Let’s see how we can create a file by using ‘touch’ command.

Step 1: First of all, open Terminal by clicking on Ubuntu launcher and search for Terminal.

Step 2: Now click on the Terminal and wait for the terminal to open.

Step 3: By default, the terminal is on the ‘home’ location but to verify where the terminal is pointing right now we will use ‘pwd’ command. The ‘pwd’ will return the path to which the terminal is currently pointing. Right now, we are creating a file on the default location to which a terminal is pointing but if you want to create a file in some different location you can change the path by using ‘cd’ change directory command. The general syntax of the cd command is “cd ‘path to folder’”.

Step 4: Now to create a file write a command “touch filename.ext” where filename will be the name of your file and ext will be the extension of the file. E.g. in the demo I’m using dummy.txt. Once the command is executed the terminal will create a file on the path as shown in the following screenshots:

Congratulations! Your file has been created with ‘touch’ command.

Note: Before creating a new file make sure that the file is not already created. To ensure
this you can use “ls” command.

3. Using Redirect > operator

In Linux ‘>’ is known as output redirection operator provides an option to redirect the output of the command to a file instead of the standard terminal screen. We can also use the redirect operator to create a file.

let’s see how we can create a file by using ‘touch’ command.

Step 1: First of all, open Terminal by clicking on Ubuntu launcher and search for Terminal.

Step 2: Now click on the Terminal and wait for the terminal to open.

Step 3: By default, the terminal is on the ‘home’ location but to verify where the terminal is pointing right now we will use ‘pwd’ command. The ‘pwd’ will return the path to which the terminal is currently pointing. Right now, we are creating a file on the default location to which a terminal is pointing but if you want to create a file in some different location you can change the path by using ‘cd’ change directory command. The general syntax of cd command is “cd ‘path to folder’”.

Step 4: Now to create a file write a command “echo “this is a dummy text” > filename.ext” where filename will be the name of your file and ext will be the extension of the file. E.g. in
the demo I’m using dummy.txt. Once the command is executed the terminal will create a file on the path as shown in the following screenshot:

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have discussed the need for a command-line interface, its advantages, and the different methods to create a file in Linux by using the terminal.

Karim Buzdar

About the Author: Karim Buzdar holds a degree in telecommunication engineering and holds several sysadmin certifications. As an IT engineer and technical author, he writes for various web sites. You can reach Karim on LinkedIn

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4 Ways to Create a Text File in Linux Terminal

In this Linux beginner series, you’ll learn various methods to create a text file in Linux terminal.

If you have used the desktop oriented operating system such as Windows, creating file is a piece of cake. You right click in the file explorer and you would find the option of creating new file.

Things won’t look the same when you are in a command line environment. There is no right click option here. So how do you create a file in Linux then? Let me show you that.

Create file in Linux command line

There are various ways of creating a new file in Linux terminal. I’ll show you the commands one by one. I am using Ubuntu here but creating files in Ubuntu terminal is the same as any other Linux distribution.

1. Create an empty file using touch command

One of the biggest usages of the touch command in Linux is to create a new empty file. The syntax is super simple.

If the file doesn’t exist already, it will create a new empty file. If a file with the same name exists already, it will update the timestamps of the file.

2. Create files using cat command

Another popular way of creating new file is by using the cat command in Linux. The cat command is mostly used for viewing the content of a file but you can use it to create new file as well.

You can write some new text at this time if you want but that’s not necessary. To save and exit, use Ctrl+D terminal shortcut.

If the file with that name already exists and you write new text in it using the cat command, the new lines will be appended at the end of the file.

3. Create new file using echo command

The main use of the echo command is to simply repeat (echo) what you type on the screen. But if you use the redirection with echo, you can create a new file.

To create a new empty file using echo you can use something like this:

The newly created filename.txt file will have the following text: This is a sample text. You can view the file in Linux using cat or other viewing commands.

You are not obliged to put a sample text with echo. You can create an (almost) empty file using the echo command like this:

This will create a new file with just one empty line. You can check the number of lines with wc command.

4. Create a new file using a text editor like Nano or Vim

The last method in this series is the use of a text editor. A terminal-based text editor such as Emacs, Vim or Nano can surely be used for creating a new file in Linux.

Before you use these text editors, you should make sure that you know the basics such as saving an existing from the editor. Unlike the GUI tools, using Ctrl+S in the terminal won’t save the file. It could, in fact, send your terminal into a seemingly frozen state from which you recover using Ctrl+Q.

Let’s say you are going to use Vim editor. Make sure that you are aware of the basic vim commands, and then open a new file with it like this:

What’s your favorite command?

So, I just shared 4 different ways of creating a file in Linux. Personally, I prefer using touch for creating empty file and Vim if I have to edit the file. On a related note, you may want to learn about the file command in Linux that is helpful in determining the actual type of the file.

Which command do you prefer here? Please share your views in the comment section below.

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