Create New Empty File

[phaedo5]

I have a directory full of jpgs and zips. I want to create an empty copy of that file. If I have test.jpg. I want to create test.jpg in another directory that's pretty much an empty file.

I have this:
for file in `find . -type f`; do SOMETHING; done;

Is there an easy way to do this?

Any help would be great!

[i92guboj]

If you want to recreate the same structure, you can use find -type d to find first all the directories with -exec mkdir to recreate them. You might need to parse a bit the paths depending on the way the script is going to operate.

After that, you can use find -type f to find the files. The usual command to create an empty file is touch.

[ynilesh]

#!/bin/bash
SRC=/source/dir
DEST=/dest/dir

cd $SRC
for file in `ls -al *.conf | awk '{print $8}'` 
do 
    touch $DEST/$file
    echo "Empty File created $DEST/$file "
done

- nilesh

[i92guboj]

Hi,

#!/bin/bash
SRC=/source/dir
DEST=/dest/dir

cd $SRC
for file in `ls -al *.conf | awk '{print $8}'` 
do 
    touch $DEST/$file
    echo "Empty File created $DEST/$file "
done

- nilesh

I discourage the usage of ls to get file names, since it will screw up if the file names contain any space or the ls output format changes. Parsing the ls output is complex and non-reliable. Plus this is just simpler:

for file in *.conf
do
...
done

Aditional advantages are that you don't have to launch ls, nor awk, nor to open a pipe, which are all a waste of resources.

If you insist on using ls, at least make sure the format is correct:

ls -1 *.conf | while read file
do
...
done

Note that "-1" is a number one, not an 'l' letter. At least that way you ensure you are reading more consistent data (though I still see no point in using ls).It just make the things more complicated and error prone.

Anyway, this will not replicate the directory tree as the original posted wanted. The 'find' approach is the simplest because it recurses through the directory tree.

[ynilesh]

Thanks, i was not knowing it