macOS AppleScript: How to blank a text file?

[WhoGotTheChunk]

I have a text file that I need to blank every time I run a script. At the moment I'm just deleting it and making a new one. I'm sure theres a better way because I get the trash sound every time the script runs.

I think its pretty simple if you have the know how.

Thanks,
Chunk

 

[Red Menace]

Is this something that your script writes to? You could do something like open the file for write access and set eof to 0 - also, using the rm command in a do shell script won't make any noise.

 

[WhoGotTheChunk]

Well what I'm doing is storing a list in there of contacts, then when someone connects to the chat system, it updates it and says hello to them. When someone leaves, it removes them from the list. The only way I've found to do it is delete the file otherwise there is text left at the end of the text file.

 

[subsonix]

In bash (possibly others as well) shell script you can blank a file like this:

> filename

This does not unlink the file, but set the length to 0 bytes. Beware that you get no warnings or second chances here though (same with rm without -i flag).

 

[WhoGotTheChunk]

Found a site on how to do it.

used the command

set eof contactsFile to 0

 

[ratsg]

cp /dev/null filename.ext