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1

I am new to Linux. There is something that is unclear to me.

What is the difference between echo "" > logfile and > logfile ?

When I run the first one, the logfile size doesn't become zero and same name file will be created with 1 byte size. For the second one, logfile size will become zero and same name file will be created with 0 byte size.

In what situations should the commands be used differently?

For me, I use it when I want to free up the log files.

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There is also : > logfile, which might be a little more portable than just > logfile as the latter can behave differently in some shells. –  Patrick Jun 18 '12 at 22:55
    
great thanks. I will check it out too. –  kitokid Jun 19 '12 at 3:17

1 Answer 1

up vote 10 down vote accepted

They do essentially the same thing. You're seeing a file size difference because echo includes a newline at the end, which takes up a byte. You can stop it with -n, so echo -n "" > logfile will result in a 0-byte file

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thanks. gain one knowledge. –  kitokid Jun 18 '12 at 6:39

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