For now I use
fs.openSync(filepath, 'a')
But it's a little tricky. Is there a 'standard' way to create an empty file in Node.js?
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4 Answers
If you want to force the file to be empty then you want to use the 'w' flag instead:
var fd = fs.openSync(filepath, 'w');
That will truncate the file if it exists and create it if it doesn't.
Wrap it in an fs.closeSync call if you don't need the file descriptor it returns.
fs.closeSync(fs.openSync(filepath, 'w'));
3 Comments
ahuigo
fs.writeFileSync('empty.txt', '');
ahuigo
fs.appendFileSync('do_not_override.txt', '');
Aditya Kresna Permana
you may take a look here for more options than
w flag nodejs.org/api/fs.html#fs_file_system_flagsHere's the async way, using "wx" so it fails on existing files.
var fs = require("fs");
fs.open(path, "wx", function (err, fd) {
// handle error
fs.close(fd, function (err) {
// handle error
});
});
2 Comments
Nick Sotiros
why would you want it to fail?
Michael Ozeryansky
@NickSotiros so the file doesn't get overwritten, some use cases may want that.
If you want it to be just like the UNIX touch I would use what you have fs.openSync(filepath, 'a') otherwise the 'w' will overwrite the file if it already exists and 'wx' will fail if it already exists. But you want to update the file's mtime, so use 'a' and append nothing.
Comments
You can also use writeFileSync API with an empty string:
fs.writeFileSync(filepath,'');
This will overwrite the file if it already exists.
