Windows equivalent of touch i e the node js way to create an index html

Question

On a windows machine I get this error      touch  is not recognized as an internal or external command  operable program or batch file    when I follow the instructions to do   touch index html app js style css   Is there a windows equivalent of using  touch   Do I need to create these files by hand  and modify them to change the timestamp  in order to implement this sort of command  That doesn t seem very     node-ish

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I m surprised how many answers here are just wrong  Echoing nothing into a file will fill the file with something like ECHO is ON  and trying to echo  nul into a file will literally place  nul into the file  Additionally for PowerShell  echoing  null into a file won t actually make a 0kb file  but something encoded as UCS-2 LE BOM  which can get messy if you need to make sure your files don t have a byte-order mark   After testing all the answers here and referencing some similar ones  I can guarantee these will work per console shell  Just change FileName FileExtension to the full or relative-path of the file you want to touch  thanks to Keith Russell for the COPY NUL FILE EXT update    CMD w Timestamp Updates  copy NUL FileName FileExtension  This will create a new file named whatever you placed instead of FileName FileExtension with a size of 0 bytes  If the file already exists it will basically copy itself in-place to update the timestamp  I d say this is more of a workaround than 1 1 functionality with touch but I don t know of any built-in tools for CMD that can accomplish updating a file s timestamp without changing any of its other content   CMD  w out Timestamp Updates  if not exist FileName FileExtension copy NUL FileName FileExtension    Powershell w Timestamp Updates  if    Test-Path FileName FileExtension -PathType Leaf    New-Item FileName FileExtension -Type file  else   ls FileName FileExtension   LastWriteTime   Get-Date   Yes  it will work in-console as a one-liner  no requirement to place it in a PowerShell script file   PowerShell  w out Timestamp Updates  if    Test-Path FileName FileExtension -PathType Leaf    New-Item FileName FileExtension -Type file

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You can also use copy con  filename  in a Windows command window  cmd exe    C  copy con yourfile txt  enter  C  CTRL   Z  enter    hold CTRL key  amp  press  Z  then press Enter key   Z     1 Files Copied    This will create a file named yourfile txt in the local directory

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No command     neither typenor echo    is necessary to emulate Unix s Mac OS X s  touch  command in a Windows Powershell terminal  Simply use the following shorthand    null  gt  filename   This will create an empty file named  filename  at your current location  Use any filename extension that you might need  e g    txt    Source  https   superuser com questions 502374 equivalent-of-linux-touch-to-create-an-empty-file-with-powershell  see comments

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From the Terminal of Visual Code Studio on Windows 10  this is what worked for me to create a new file    type  gt  hello js echo  gt  orange js ni  gt  peach js

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On windows Power Shell  you can use the following command    New-Item  lt filename extension gt    or   New-Item  lt filename extension gt  -type file      Note  New-Item can be replaced with its alias ni

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I use cmder  a command line emulator    It allows you to run all Linux commands inside a Windows machine   It can be downloaded from https   cmder net   I really like it

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The answer is wrong  it only works when the file does not exist  If the file exists  using the first does nothing  the second adds a line at the end of the file    The correct answer is   copy  b filename ext       I found it here  https   superuser com questions 10426 windows-equivalent-of-the-linux-command-touch 764721 764721

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As Raghuveer points out in his her answer  ni is the PowerShell alias for New-Item  so you can create files from a PowerShell prompt using ni instead of touch  If you prefer to type touch instead of ni  you can set a touch alias to the PowerShell New-Item cmdlet  Creating a touch command in Windows PowerShell  From a PowerShell prompt  define the new alias  Set-Alias -Name touch -Value New-Item  Now the touch command works almost the same as you are expecting  The only difference is that you ll need to separate your list of files with commas  touch index html  app js  style css  Note that this only sets the alias for PowerShell  If PowerShell isn t your thing  you can set up WSL or use bash for Windows  Unfortunately the alias will be forgotten as soon as you end your PowerShell session  To make the alias permanent  you have to add it to your PowerShell user profile  From a PowerShell prompt  notepad  profile  Add your alias definition to your profile and save

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For a very simple version of touch which would be mostly used to create a 0 byte file in the current directory  an alternative would be creating a touch bat file and either adding it to the  Path  or copying it to the C  Windows System32 directory  like so  touch bat  echo off powershell New-Item    -ItemType file  Creating a single file  C  Users YourName Desktop touch a txt      Directory  C  Users YourName Desktop  Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name ----                 -------------         ------ ---- -a----        2020-10-14  10 28 PM              0 a txt  Creating multiple files  C  Users YourName Desktop touch  b txt c txt       Directory  C  Users YourName Desktop  Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name ----                 -------------         ------ ---- -a----        2020-10-14  10 52 PM              0 b txt -a----        2020-10-14  10 52 PM              0 c txt  Also  Works both with PowerShell and the Command Prompt  Works with existing subdirectories  Does not create a file if it already exists    New-Item   The file  C  Users YourName Desktop a txt  already exists    For multiple files  creates only the files that do not exist   Accepts a comma-separated list of filenames without spaces or enclosed in quotes if spaces are necessary      C  Users YourName Desktop touch d txt e txt f txt C  Users YourName Desktop touch  g txt   name with spaces txt

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You can replicate the functionality of touch with the following command     gt  gt filename   What this does is attempts to execute a program called    but if   does not exist  or is not an executable that produces output  then no output is produced by it  It is essentially a hack on the functionality  however you will get the following error message          is not recognized as an internal or external command    operable program or batch file    If you don t want the error message then you can do one of two things   type nul  gt  gt  filename   Or     gt  gt filename 2 gt nul   The type command tries to display the contents of nul  which does nothing but returns an EOF  end of file  when read    2 gt nul sends error-output  output 2  to nul  which ignores all input when written to   Obviously the second command  with 2 gt nul  is made redundant by the type command since it is quicker to type  But at least you now have the option and the knowledge

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Easy  example with txt file  echo  null  gt  gt  filename txt

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You can use this command  ECHO    filename txt  it will create a file with the given extension in the current folder   UPDATE   for an empty file use  copy NUL filename txt

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If you have Cygwin installed in your PC  you can simply use the supplied executable for touch  also via windows command prompt    C  cygwin64 bin touch exe  lt file path gt

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Yes you can use Node for Touch I just use that and its working all fine in windows Cmd or gitbash

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in cmd window type  type nul  gt  your file txt  This will create 0 bytes in your file txt file  Another way of doing it is by using the echo command  echo  gt  your file txt  echo  - will create a file with one empty line in it  Edited on 2019-04-01  If you need to preserve the content of the file use  gt  gt  instead of  gt   gt    Creates a new file  gt  gt   Preserves content of the file  Example type nul  gt  gt  your file txt  Edited on 2020-04-07 You can also use call command   Calls one batch program from another without stopping the parent batch program  The call command accepts labels as the target of the call   Example  call  gt  gt  your file txt

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Use the following command on the your command line   fsutil file createnew filename  requiredSize   The parameters info as followed   fsutil - File system utility   the executable you are running     file - triggers a file action  createnew - the action to perform  create a new file   filename - would be literally the name of the file  requiredSize - would allocate a file size in bytes in the created file

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Assuming the file exists and you just need to update the timestamp   type test c  gt  test c bkp  amp  amp  type test c bkp  gt  test c  amp  amp  del test c bkp

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as mentioned   echo  gt  gt  index html   it can be any file  with any extension then do  notepad index html   this will open your file in the notepad editor

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Windows does not natively include a touch command    You can use any of the available public versions or you can use your own version  Save this code as touch cmd and place it somewhere in your path   echo off     setlocal enableextensions disabledelayedexpansion       for   a in      do if exist     a            pushd     dpa   amp  amp    copy  b     nxa      amp  popd         else           type nul  gt      fa          gt nul 2 gt  amp 1   It will iterate over it argument list  and for each element if it exists  update the file timestamp  else  create it

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instal npm in you machine run the below command in you command prompt  npm install touch-cli -g  now you will be able to use touch cmd

[cmd] Windows equivalent of 'touch' (i.e. the node.js way to create an index.html)

CMD w/Timestamp Updates

CMD w/out Timestamp Updates

Powershell w/Timestamp Updates

PowerShell w/out Timestamp Updates

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