Set a file to a specific byte length.
Linux Commands: Use truncate to shorten a known scratch file without replacing its inode.
truncate -s 3 -- data.txt
cat data.txt
printf "\n"Expected output EXAMPLE
abc
Details
Run in Bash on GNU/Linux in a scratch directory. Tested with the GNU utilities supplied by Ubuntu. Use truncate to shorten a known scratch file without replacing its inode.
Truncating destroys bytes beyond the new end of the file.
Tested on Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS · · GNU bash, version 5.2.21(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) · bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3; sed 4.9-2ubuntu0.24.04.1
Test inputs, results and environment
The exact published code ran in a dedicated Linux test container with prepared inputs. Unprivileged snippet process, external networking disabled, read-only root filesystem, and a fresh temporary working directory. Fixtures and output records are isolated from the application database. Testing covers this example and its stated checks, not every input, operating system, or runtime version. The Linux container shares its host's kernel; this is not a native Windows test.
- Architecture / host kernel
- x86_64 / 6.18.54.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2
- Snippet identity / locale
- uid=65534, gid=65534 (unprivileged) / C.UTF-8
- Interpreter invocation
bash -euo pipefail -c <published code>- Container image ID
sha256:32dc2d998158b6554c99b73b533f423696a0f3e31e8cbea9db10b5eee9a2fadd- Code SHA-256
b32e7326456735afa35943a49a0e1c10688d6cfa2adb47b4aef96b1b0af2fd09- Dependencies
- bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3; sed 4.9-2ubuntu0.24.04.1
Test input setup
These are the prepared inputs used by the test harness. See Details above for the prerequisites and how to run this example.
printf 'abcdef' > data.txt
Observed standard output
abc
Exit code: 0. Standard error: empty. Validation: Exact stdout comparison. System-dependent values above are one recorded run.
Additional assertions that passed
Checks recorded by the test harness. Where Python assertions are shown, browser cases use Playwright and simulator cases may inspect pin transitions: result.stdout is captured output, work is the temporary directory, and Path is pathlib.Path. The harness also imports json and csv.
assert Path('data.txt').read_bytes() == b'abc'