Creating new file through Windows Powershell

Question

I have googled for the below question, but could not find any answer. Can someone help me on this; What is the command to create a new file through Windows Powershell?

Fotina

what type of file are you trying to create? Or in other words what file extension? Like .txt .docx etc... – Yokel

@user6811411 These sorts of comments never seem to age well. This question is now the first result when searching "powershell create empty file" on Google. – Paxwax

Answer 1

To create file using echo

echo some-text  > filename.txt

Example:

C:\>echo This is a sample text file > sample.txt
C:\>type sample.txt
This is a sample text file
C:\>

To create file using fsutil

fsutil file createnew filename number_of_bytes

Example:

fsutil file createnew sample2.txt 2000
File C:\sample2.txt is created
C:\data>dir
01/23/2016  09:34 PM     2,000 sample2.txt
C:\data>

Limitations

Fsutil can be used only by administrators. For non-admin users it throws up below error.

c:\>fsutil file /?

The FSUTIL utility requires that you have administrative privileges. c:>

Hope this helps!

Vying

Please don't suggest the use of echo - an alias for the rarely needed Write-Output cmdlet - because it is a bad habit to promote in the PowerShell world. Newcomers need to be guided towards PowerShell's implicit output model: 'some-text' > filename.txt. If your code is meant to be cmd.exe code (it also works as that), please note the the question is tagged powershell. – Fanaticize

Answer 2

I'm guessing you're trying to create a text file?

New-Item c:\scripts\new_file.txt -type file

Where "C:\scripts\new_file.txt" is the fully qualified path including the file name and extension.

Taken from TechNet article

Fari

++, but note that you're not creating a text file, you're creating a zero-byte (empty file) - which has no inherent type. – Fanaticize

This should be the answer. Get, Start, New, and etc is new era of cmdlet that's great for sysadmin. Just left old command behind. – Gopher

how to create the file and every directory within the path? – Intersexual

Answer 3

street smart (quick, dirty but works): (might change the file and add an invisible character which might cause the compiler to fail)

$null > file.txt
$null > file.html

Textbook method:

New-Item -path <path to the destination file> -type file

example:

New-Item -path "c:\" -type file -name "somefile.txt"

OR

ni file.xt -type file

absence of -path parameter means it creates it in the current working directory

Beore

So many great options, especially short-hand cmd ni with working directory – Racketeer

Answer 4

ni filename.txt

Replace filename.txt with your file .

I found this the simplest answer to the question, and refer to other answers for more details.

Told

Quick thing to point out here is that ni is a default alias for the New-Item command. Alias information for a specific command can be view via the gal -definition command, e.g. gal -definition New-Item. – Engraft

I really liked this answer. Also ni (New-Item) creates the file with UTF-8 encoding and echo creates it with ucs-2 le bom(UTF-16) encoding. Unless you change the encoding, the files created with echo will be twice the size. – Grandchild

This is easiest. Note that when running this, my powershell asked for type, I put in file – Platina

Answer 5

Here is another way to create a blank text file in Powershell which allows you to specify the encoding.

First example

For a blank text file:

Out-File C:\filename.txt -encoding ascii

Without -encoding ascii, Powershell defaults to Unicode. You must specify ascii if you want it to be readable or editable by another source.

Overwriting the file with new text:

"Some Text on first line" | Out-File C:\filename1.txt -encoding ascii

This replaces whatever text is in filename.txt with Some Text on first line.

Appending text to the current file contents:

"Some More Text after the old text" | Out-File C:\filename1.txt -encoding ascii -Append

Specifying -Append leaves the current contents of filename.txt alone and adds Some More Text after the old text to the end of the file, leaving the current content intact.

Protest

Answer 6

As many have already pointed out, you can create files with the New-File command.
This command has a default alias set to ni but if you're used to unix commands you can create your own custom command easily.

Create a touch command to act as New-File like this:

Set-Alias -Name touch -Value New-Item

This new alias will allow you to create new files like so:

touch filename.txt

This would make these 3 commands equivalent:

New-Item filename.txt
ni filename.txt
touch filename.txt

Keep in mind that for this to be persistent, you should add the alias to your powershell profile. To get it's location simply run $profile on ps. If you want to edit it directly, run code $profile (for VSCode), vim $profile (for vim) or whatever.

Letha

Answer 7

Another way to do it (method I like)

New-Item -ItemType file -Value 'This is just a test file' -Path C:\Users\Rick\Desktop\test.txt

Source: New-Item

Feather

Answer 8

Use the New-item cmdlet and your new file name.

New-item <filename>

Example:

New-item My_newFile.txt

Inbreeding

Answer 9

                                                       # encodings:

New-Item file.js -ItemType File -Value "some content"  # UTF-8

"some content" | Out-File main.js -Encoding utf8       # UTF-8-BOM

echo "some content" > file.js                          # UCS-2 LE BOM

Gabrielgabriela

Answer 10

The easiest way in any command line:

"" > path/to/file/filename.extension

Abortionist