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

If you are worried about file handles:

File.open("foo.txt", "w") {}

From the docs:

If the optional code block is given, it will be passed the opened file as an argument, and the File object will automatically be closed when the block terminates.

Answer 2

Just an example:

File.open "foo.txt", "w"

Answer 3

FileUtils.touch looks like what it does, and mirrors^* the touch command:

require 'fileutils'
FileUtils.touch('file.txt')

^{* Unlike touch(1) you can't update mtime or atime alone. It's also missing a few other nice options.}

Answer 4

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") {}

Answer 5

And also, less advantageous, but very brief:

`touch file.txt`