Creating an empty txt file on Mac OS without opening an application first
Question
Is there a way to simply create a new document e.g. on the Desktop and open it with e.g. textmate with a simple shortcut or script. I know that the MS Windows approach where you can just create a new empty txt file directly is not working for Mac. I am looking for a method achieving something similar. Any ideas?
Solution
alt text http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/2280/screenshot20100106at125.png
This uses TextMate's mate
command line helper application.
If it's not installed, go to TextMate > Help > Terminal Usage.
#!/bin/bash
cd "$(dirname "$0")"
ntf="Untitled $(date +%s).txt"
touch "$ntf"
mate "$ntf"
- Save this on your Desktop as "New Text File.command"
- Make it executable (in Terminal: chmod +x "New Text File.command")
- Optional: Copy and paste the TextMate icon from TextMate.app's "Get Info" dialog in to your new file's "Get Info" dialog.
OTHER TIPS
You can write this in the terminal:
touch filename.txt
Or as a script:
#!/bin/sh
touch filename.txt
How about the unix approach of creating an empty file with touch
?
It could be done in a script, and passed to an application.
Traditional on the shell is to use the touch
command. But in any programming language you can do it without running an external program by opening a file with the O_CREAT flag:
in C:
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
close(open("myfile.txt", O_WRONLY | O_CREAT | O_TRUNC, 0664));
in Perl:
open TEMP '>', 'myfile.txt';
close TEMP;
in Tcl:
close [open "myfile.txt" w+]
There is another to create new files, you can also create your own templates with it. Just search for NewDoc in AppStore.
There's a few third party tools that add that kind of functionality. The newest I've seen is Templates