How to create a file in the directory in PowerShell

Question

My dirctory is D:\\Main. I want to create a file named file.js in the directory only i.e. D:\\Main. I use the code type nul > file.js. It creates the file but also displayes an error message saying that nul folder wasn't found. Am I doing something wrong? How do I improve the code to stop the error message?

Answer 1

What you attempted to use is valid for CMD.EXE, but in PowerShell, type is an alias for Get-Content, which expects a valid device or file. However, the null device is not available in PowerShell, although a variable $null will return the desired value. You should instead use

New-Item -Path . -Name "file.js" -Value $null

or

Set-Content -Path .\file.js -Value $null

to create an empty file.

Answer 2

I didn't get a satisfactory answer so I searched the command list for PowerShell on Microsoft's website.

Use

Set-Content -path D:\\Main\file.js

Then it will ask for values *(e.g. [-Value0], [-Value1], ...)." Values are what what you want to type in the file e.g. [-Value0] will contain what will be in the first line of the code of file.js. Pressing enter will move to next line i.e. [-Value1]. Pressing enter without typing anything in a value will exit taking values and save the file.

The above command can be shortened like: sc for Set-Content & . for D:\\Main because it is your default directory. You can also skip the -path term. So the new shortened command will be:

sc .\file.js