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2.\" Copyright (c) 2000 Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@FreeBSD.org>.
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26.\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/truncate/truncate.1,v 1.12 2005/01/17 07:44:32 ru Exp $
27.\"
28.Dd July 4, 2000
29.Dt TRUNCATE 1
30.Os
31.SH NAME
32truncate \- truncate or extend the length of files
33.SH SYNOPSIS
34truncate
35.Op Fl c
36.Bk -words
37.Fl s Xo
38.Sm off
39.Op Cm + | -
40.Ar size
41.Op Cm K | k | M | m | G | g
42.Sm on
43.Xc
44.Ek
45.Ar
46truncate
47.Op Fl c
48.Bk -words
49.Fl r Ar rfile
50.Ek
51.Ar
52.SH DESCRIPTION
53The
54truncate
55utility adjusts the length of each regular file given on the command-line.
56.Pp
57The following options are available:
58.Bl -tag -width indent
59.It Fl c
60Do not create files if they do not exist.
61The
62truncate
63utility does not treat this as an error.
64No error messages are displayed
65and the exit value is not affected.
66.It Fl r Ar rfile
67Truncate files to the length of the file
68.Ar rfile .
69.It Fl s Xo
70.Sm off
71.Op Cm + | -
72.Ar size
73.Op Cm K | k | M | m | G | g
74.Sm on
75.Xc
76If the
77.Ar size
78argument is preceded by a plus sign
79.Pq Cm + ,
80files will be extended by this number of bytes.
81If the
82.Ar size
83argument is preceded by a dash
84.Pq Cm - ,
85file lengths will be reduced by no more than this number of bytes,
86to a minimum length of zero bytes.
87Otherwise, the
88.Ar size
89argument specifies an absolute length to which all files
90should be extended or reduced as appropriate.
91.Pp
92The
93.Ar size
94argument may be suffixed with one of
95.Cm K ,
96.Cm M
97or
98.Cm G
99(either upper or lower case) to indicate a multiple of
100Kilobytes, Megabytes or Gigabytes
101respectively.
102.El
103.Pp
104Exactly one of the
105.Fl r
106and
107.Fl s
108options must be specified.
109.Pp
110If a file is made smaller, its extra data is lost.
111If a file is made larger,
112it will be extended as if by writing bytes with the value zero.
113If the file does not exist,
114it is created unless the
115.Fl c
116option is specified.
117.Pp
118Note that,
119while truncating a file causes space on disk to be freed,
120extending a file does not cause space to be allocated.
121To extend a file and actually allocate the space,
122it is necessary to explicitly write data to it,
123using (for example) the shell's
124.Ql >>
125redirection syntax, or
126.Xr dd 1 .
127.SH EXIT STATUS
128.Ex -std
129If the operation fails for an argument,
130truncate
131will issue a diagnostic
132and continue processing the remaining arguments.
133.SH SEE ALSO
134.BR dd(1),
135.BR touch(1),
136.BR truncate(2)
137.SH STANDARDS
138The
139truncate
140utility conforms to no known standards.
141.SH HISTORY
142The
143truncate
144utility first appeared in FreeBSD 4.2.
145.SH AUTHORS
146The truncate utility was written by Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@starjuice.net>.
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