Create file in home directory from another directory

Question

I know touch & echo for creating an empty file. But how can I create an empty file in the home directory in one line? I have tried touch ~/boo.txt but it's creating the file. I'm new to shell, I need to know two approaches of creating an empty file in Home directory from another directory. TIA

Answer 1

Here is an alternative to touch, just redirect nothing to a file:

> ~/newfile

Important: it will overwrite the file if it's already there, however you can use:

(set -C; > ~/newfile)

so it's not going to be overwritten if it's already exist.

here is another fun way to do this:

cat <<<"" >> ~/newfile

the cat is unnecessary so we can just use:

>> ~/newfile

Answer 2

touch /home/username/newfile.txt

note:file and directory names are case sensitive

Answer 3

You can use the truncate command, which will create the file if it doesn't exist. Be warned that this will also empty an existing file.

truncate -s 0 ~/newfile