Creating an empty file in Ruby: “touch” equivalent?

Question

What is the best way to create an empty file in Ruby?

Something similar to the Unix command, touch:

touch file.txt

Answer 1

In Ruby 1.9.3+, you can use File.write (a.k.a IO.write):

File.write("foo.txt", "")

For earlier version, either require "backports/1.9.3/file/write" or use File.open("foo.txt", "w") {}