Create empty file using python

I’d like to create a file with path x using python. I’ve been using os.system(y) where y = 'touch %s' % (x). I’ve looked for a non-directory version of os.mkdir, but I haven’t been able to find anything. Is there a tool like this to create a file without opening it, or using system or popen/subprocess?

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

There is no way to create a file without opening it There is os.mknod("newfile.txt") (but it requires root privileges on OSX). The system call to create a file is actually open() with the O_CREAT flag. So no matter how, you’ll always open the file.

So the easiest way to simply create a file without truncating it in case it exists is this:

open(x, 'a').close()

Actually you could omit the .close() since the refcounting GC of CPython will close it immediately after the open() statement finished – but it’s cleaner to do it explicitely and relying on CPython-specific behaviour is not good either.

In case you want touch‘s behaviour (i.e. update the mtime in case the file exists):

import os
def touch(path):
    with open(path, 'a'):
        os.utime(path, None)

You could extend this to also create any directories in the path that do not exist:

basedir = os.path.dirname(path)
if not os.path.exists(basedir):
    os.makedirs(basedir)

Method 2

Of course there IS a way to create files without opening. It’s as easy as calling os.mknod("newfile.txt"). The only drawback is that this call requires root privileges on OSX.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0