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Zero-byte files cannot be loaded or used by most applications.

Conversely, zero-byte files must use some disk space to be indexed by a filesystem, though none for content. Some very simple formats do not use metadata, such as ASCII text files these may validly be zero bytes (a common convention terminates text files with a one- or two-byte newline, however). When the zero-byte file is made, file system does not record the file's content on storage, but only updates its index table.Įven a file describing an empty word processor document, an image file with zero-by-zero dimensions, or an audio file of length zero seconds usually still contains metadata identifying the file format and describing some basic attributes of the file it results in the file with some positive size.

Because writes are cached in memory and only flushed to disk at a later time ( page cache), a program that does not flush its writes to disk or terminate normally may result in a zero-byte file. Zero-byte files may arise in cases where a program creates a file but aborts or is interrupted prematurely while writing to it.

On Unix-like systems, the shell command $ touch filename results in a zero-byte file filename. There are many ways that could manually create a zero-byte file, for example, saving empty content in a text editor, using utilities provided by operating systems, or programming to create it.