How to empty or clear the contents of an existing UNIX file ?
The special file /dev/null can and does contain nothing. While most often used as a sink of nothingness, for example writing output to it that you don’t want to keep, it can be used as a source of nothingness, too. To replace the contents of the file XYZ.txt with nothing, you can use the command cat /dev/null > XYZ.txt This command makes sense as it is using standard UNIX redirection to place the contents of one file (a known empty one) to another file.
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