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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T00:45:43+00:00

Is it possible to clear a file preserving its timestamp, using standard Linux commands?

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Is it possible to clear a file preserving its timestamp, using standard Linux commands? For example:

echo “” > file-name

converts the text file to empty, this is OK for me. But I need to keep the timestamp unchanged.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can do the following using touch:

    #!/bin/sh
TMPFILE=`mktemp`
#save the timestamp
touch -r file-name $TMPFILE
> file_name
#restore the timestamp after truncation
touch -r $TMPFILE file-name
rm $TMPFILE
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