TRUNCATE(1) User Commands TRUNCATE(1) NAME truncate - shrink or extend the size of a file to the specified size SYNOPSIS truncate OPTION... FILE... DESCRIPTION Shrink or extend the size of each FILE to the specified size A FILE argument that does not exist is created. If a FILE is larger than the specified size, the extra data is lost. If a FILE is shorter, it is extended and the sparse extended part (hole) reads as zero bytes. Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. -c, --no-create do not create any files -o, --io-blocks treat SIZE as number of IO blocks instead of bytes -r, --reference=RFILE base size on RFILE -s, --size=SIZE set or adjust the file size by SIZE bytes --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit The SIZE argument is an integer and optional unit (example: 10K is 10*1024). Units are K,M,G,T,P,E,Z,Y,R,Q (powers of 1024) or KB,MB,... (powers of 1000). Binary prefixes can be used, too: KiB=K, MiB=M, and so on. SIZE may also be prefixed by one of the following modifying characters: '+' extend by, '-' reduce by, '<' at most, '>' at least, '/' round down to multiple of, '%' round up to multiple of. AUTHOR Written by Padraig Brady. REPORTING BUGS GNU coreutils online help: Report any translation bugs to COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later . This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. SEE ALSO dd(1), truncate(2), ftruncate(2) Full documentation or available locally via: info '(coreutils) truncate invocation' GNU coreutils 9.5 March 2024 TRUNCATE(1)