Empty a text file?

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a text file that I need to re-initialize, meaning I need to empty it's contents but not unlink the file itself. Is there a more elegant way of doing it besides what I have below?

open(FILE, ">file.dat");
close FILE
[download]

Comment on Empty a text file? Download Code

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Re: Empty a text file? by kyle (Abbot) on Apr 11, 2008 at 18:16 UTC
You could do it with more error checking. `my $file = 'file.dat'; open my $fh, '>', $file or die "Can't write '$file': $!"; close $fh or die "Close error: $!";` [download] You could do it with a call to the shell. (If 'file.dat' is not really a literal, you have to watch out for shell metacharacters in the filename.) `system( "echo -n > file.dat" );` [download] Or you could just use truncate: `truncate 'file.dat', 0 or die "Can't truncate file.dat: $!";` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Empty a text file? by mr_mischief (Monsignor) on Apr 11, 2008 at 18:29 UTC
OT, but FYI: If you're using that second one under Linux (under bash on Linux at least) then you're wasting a call to echo. This will work just as well: `perl -e 'system q{>file.dat}'` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Empty a text file? by sasdrtx (Friar) on Apr 11, 2008 at 18:18 UTC
Yes. Try `open FILE, ">file.dat"; close FILE` [download] I admit it's not a lot more elegant, but what do you expect? sas	[reply] [d/l]