Creating Empty Files (touch)

Command Equivalents

Description

PowerShell does not have a direct equivalent or a built-in alias for the Linux touch command. The two primary functions of touch—creating a new, empty file and updating an existing file’s timestamp—are handled by different methods in PowerShell.

This page focuses on the most common use case: creating a new, empty file.

Methods for Creating an Empty File

There are several common ways to create a zero-byte file in PowerShell.

Method 1: Using New-Item

This is the most explicit or “proper” method. You use the same New-Item cmdlet as for creating directories, but you specify the -ItemType as File.

# Creates a new empty file named config.json
New-Item -Path ".\config.json" -ItemType File

Method 2: Using Set-Content (Common Shortcut)

A very popular and often quicker method is to use Set-Content. This cmdlet is designed to write content to a file, but if you provide no content ($null), it creates an empty file.

# Creates a new empty file, overwriting it if it exists
Set-Content -Path ".\app.log" -Value $null

Method 3: Using Redirection (Quickest)

For interactive use, the fastest way to create an empty file is often with the output redirection operator >. By redirecting “nothing” ($null) to a file, you create a zero-byte file.

# Creates a new empty file named empty.tmp
$null > empty.tmp

Updating Timestamps

For completeness, the other function of touch is to update a file’s LastWriteTime timestamp. In PowerShell, this is done by directly manipulating the property on the file object.

# Get the file object and set its LastWriteTime property to the current time
(Get-Item ".\my-file.txt").LastWriteTime = Get-Date