simultaneously create three empty files?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I can't get touch to simultaneously create three empty files file1, file2, file3. I tried:

$ touch file[1-3]

but all I got was one file:

$ file[1-3]

What did I do wrong?

2

With file[1-3], the current directory is searched and if filenames matching the pattern exist, the pattern is replaced with the list. Otherwise, the pattern is left alone.

If you:
touch file1 file2 file3 file4 file5
first, you command would update the timestamp on the first three.

What would you expect:
touch *
to do? Create all possible file names???? :eek:

3

Now that would eat up some serious disk space :smiley:

So there's no tricky way to use touch to create multiple files simultaneously in one brief command?

4

Use a loop,

i=1
while [ $i -le 5 ]; do touch file$i; i=`expr $i + 1`; done
5

Hi.

Some shells may help:

#!/bin/bash3 -

# @(#) s1       Demonstrate brace expansion.

echo
echo "(Versions displayed with local utility \"version\")"
version >/dev/null 2>&1 && version =o $(_eat $0 $1)
echo

rm -f scratch*
echo " Situation before:"
ls scratch*

touch scratch{1..3}

echo
echo " Situation after :"
ls scratch*

exit 0

Producing:

% ./s1

(Versions displayed with local utility "version")
Linux 2.6.11-x1
GNU bash 3.00.16(1)-release

 Situation before:
ls: scratch*: No such file or directory

 Situation after :
scratch1  scratch2  scratch3

See man page for details -- also worked on ksh 93s+ ... cheers, drl