How to 'echo “” > x' on multiple files

Question

What is the best way how to empty a bunch of files in bash? As far I've been doing this

echo "" > development.log
echo "" > production.log

I don't really want to delete those files, so rm is not possible. I've tried many things like

echo "" > *.log

but nothing worked.

Answer 1

You don't need the echo. Just

>filename

will empty the file. To edit rassie...

for FILE in *.log
do
   >"${FILE}"
done

The quotes and brackets are preferred, as they will correctly handle files with spaces or special characters in them.

Answer 2

for i in *.log; do > $i; done

Note that if you really want the files to be emptied you have to use no echo at all, see above, or pass echo the -n flag (echo -n)

Answer 3

Just for fun, another variation combining Eric Dennis' find with everybody else's redirection:

find . -name "*.log" -exec sh -c ">{}" \;

Answer 4

A loop could do:

for i in *.log; do echo "" > $i; done

Answer 5

for i in *.log; do cp /dev/null $i; done

Or, if you want to recurse:

find . -name "*.log" -exec cp /dev/null {} \;