How to create a hidden file in Bash

Question

What is the bash command to create a hidden file. I want to name it .httName.

I have tried googling for this, but none of the forums suggest any work around for this. I am simply looking for the command to solve my issue. If anyone happen to know the answer please help me out.

Uhm...what have you tried? And how does "touch .httName" not do exactly what you want? — SBI, Jun 28 '13 at 09:49
More apt title might have been: `Creating files in stealth mode`? — devnull, Jun 28 '13 at 10:07
Looks like you are creating the file & not able to `ls` it. :-) Use `ls -A`... — anishsane, Jun 28 '13 at 10:47
Possible duplicate of [How to create hidden files in Linux?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/18852292/608639) — jww, Dec 23 '19 at 12:49

kamjagin · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-28T15:07:44.537

11

Files starting with a dot are by default hidden. You can create it simply by

touch .httName

anyone will still be able to see it using

ls -a

If you want files to be properly hidden, you will have to change folder permissions using chmod. For example

chmod 770 folder_name

will prevent users (except the owner and people in the group) from listing the whole directory "folder_name".

edited Jun 28 '13 at 15:07

answered Jun 28 '13 at 09:52

kamjagin

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@TomvanderWoerdt: No, `r` (octal 4) allows listing the filenames in a directory; `x` (octal 1) allows touching (reading, writing, getting attributes, etc) the files *if you know their names*. If you give someone `r--` (e.g. 774) permissions to a directory, they can `ls -a` it, but `ls -l` will fail because it can't get the files' attributes. OTOH if you give someone `--x` (e.g. 771) permissions, they can't list its contents, but can work with files that they know the filenames of. – Gordon Davisson Jun 28 '13 at 15:01

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 27 '14 at 18:14

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Any file starting with . in file name is "hidden".

If you've a file and you want to hide it use:

mv filename.txt .filename.txt

answered Feb 27 '14 at 18:14

Muhammad Rehan Qadri

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 28 '13 at 13:09

Just to go further on the hidden point. As covered after the creation of a hidden type file .hidden changes to the permissions of the file and its parent are advised, especially within a multiuser box.

after you : touch .hidden secure the item with: chmod 600 .hidden and secure the parent directory: chmod go-w ~/parent/

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 10 '17 at 07:13

the file which start with .(dot)filename is always hidden and its used for setting configuration of the application. In Linux dot files are used for same purpose.Even you are working in current directory ls command should not display hidden file use la to shoe hideen directories.

How to create a hidden file in Bash

4 Answers4

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