Null a file in zsh

Question

In bash i can truncate a file with:

$ > file

However the same command in zsh hangs.

Is it possible to configure zsh to emulate bash when truncating files?

I believe the command you are thinking of in bash is `: > file`. Not sure what its equivalent is in zsh though. — DerfK, Feb 10 '17 at 23:20
Yeah, use `:> file` in either as that is a) portable and b) avoids the read from stdin. — thrig, Feb 11 '17 at 00:46

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 11 '17 at 08:39

Based on the feedback here, I discovered that setting the zsh NULLCMD parameter to : emulates bash.

% NULLCMD=:
% >file
% ls -l file
  -rw-r--r--  1 pfalstad        0 May 24 05:41 file

NULLCMD is indeed set to cat by default

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 10 '17 at 23:10

2

zsh is not actually hanging, it's accepting input. If you want bash behaviour use ^D (ctrl-d) to send an EOF.

answered Feb 10 '17 at 23:10

Jesusaur

2 Answers2