Cleaning out a text file.

[Avatar]

I am trying to just open a file and clear it. Is there an easier way
to do this than the way I have done.

open (DELETE, ">$filename");
print DELETE "";
close DELETE;

 

[Peter Wilson]

I am trying to just open a file and clear it. Is there an easier way
to do this than the way I have done.

open (DELETE, ">$filename");
print DELETE "";
close DELETE;

Why not just unlink it?

Peter

 

[Uri Guttman]

TC> Well, it's possible that the file needs to remain in
TC> existence, but be empty.

TC> The OP should just open for write and close immediately
TC> (and check the success of the open() too).

perldoc -f truncate

or unlink and utime will do it.

uri

 

[Jürgen Exner]

perldoc -f truncate

or unlink and utime will do it.

Careful! If you unlink the file then only this directoy entry will be
removed. If there are several hard links pointing to the same file, then
maybe the OPs intention was to actually empty this original file.
Unlink will actually remove the entry and when re-creating a file with the
same name it will be a new file that is not related to the old file any
longer, i.e. the other hardlinks will still point to the old file.

jue