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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

What do you need empty files for?

At the CMD prompt, creating an empty file is as easy as:

COPY NUL A

        1 file(s) copied.

DIR A

07/25/2017 12:12 AM 0 a

               1 File(s)              0 bytes

I'm pretty sure that date could be 1982 and your example would work equally well. :-)

Checks... Yup: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031022-00/?p=...

Ha ha, good one. Yes, it wasn't meant to show anything new, just put it because I've seen many people don't know this sort of stuff - basic command line usage.

Edit: Actually, I had originally meant to write "At the DOS/CMD prompt", but left out the DOS part because who knows how many people even know what DOS is these days ... :)

Because Windows doesn't have drag and drop save, so you can't just drag an icon from your program to a folder you already have open.

The other workaround I use is to copy and paste the path from the explorer window

I think he said they save you from having to surface the usual affordances through several settings in multiple preferences menus. Or something.

Windows has had a mechanism for creating empty documents via the shell since Windows 95. I don't think I've ever found it useful. (Much like the ability to drag and drop text from WordPad to the desktop to make a clipping file.)

Coming from Windows all my life to OS X was a bit bumpy. I will say not being able to create a quick text document is so very mildly annoying. But I've learned to use Notes.app in place of my usual purposes for *.txt files unless I'm wanting to move some chunk of text data somewhere quickly outside of the walled garden of my Apple ecosystem.

I don't quite understand why you'd ever want to create a new file in this way, and I remember being baffled by it as a child when Win95 came out.

Isn't it always going to be faster to open whatever application you want to create your file in (bonus: win+r on Windows, cmd-space on Mac) and just save the new file there? Creating the file first and then invoking the program by opening it with the GUI seems like a pathological workflow.

I think it's to not have to relocate a folder in a Save As dialog. Sometimes I already have a folder open, and just want to create a new file then drag it into my editor because I know the Save As dialog is pointed elsewhere.

Aha. That makes a bit more sense. For what it's worth, you can just drag the folder into the location bar and get roughly the same effect. If the window's already open, the small folder icon on the top works as well.

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