How to Clear Text in a File Using Command Line

For short files:

cat <path/your_file>

directly shows a text file in the terminal.

For longer files:

less <path/your_file>

lets you scroll and search (/ text to search Enter) in the file; press q to exit.

e.g.

cat /home/john/RESULTS.txt
less /home/john/RESULTS.txt

#1 Using Bash + touch:

while read line; do touch "$line.txt"; done <in

• while read line; [...]; done <in: This runs read until read itself returns 1, which happens when when the end of the file is reached; the input for read is read from a file named in in the current working directory instead of from the terminal due to the <in redirection;
• touch "$line.txt": This runs touch on the expanded value of $line.txt, which is the content of line followed by .txt; touch will create the file if not existing and update its access time if existing;

#2 Using xargs + touch:

xargs -a in -I name touch name.txt

• -a in: makes xargs read its input from a file named in in the current working directory;
• -I name: makes xargs replace every occurence of name with the current line of input in the following command;
• touch name: Runs touch on the replaced value of name; it will create the file if not existing and update its access time if existing;

% ls
in
% cat in
john
george
james
stewert
% while read line; do touch "$line.txt"; done <in
% ls
george.txt  in  james.txt  john.txt  stewert.txt
% rm *.txt
% xargs -a in -I name touch name.txt
% ls
george.txt  in  james.txt  john.txt  stewert.txt