How can I create a new blank file in an occupied directory?

Question

I am not experiencing the problem in How to create a new blank file in Nautilus 3.6 and above?, perhaps because I have a newer version of Nautilus.

$ nautilus --version
GNOME nautilus 3.14.2

I can create a blank file very easily in most directories: find some blank space, right click, and select New Document » Empty Document. However, if a folder has enough content to fill the screen, there is no blank space. If I switch to icon mode, there is blank space between the icons, but in list mode there is no blank space anywhere. I don’t recall having this difficulty in the past. Right clicking in list mode used to work. Is there any way I can restore older behaviour?

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

6

The easiest method is this keyboard combo: Alt+F, D, E.

This basically mimics Florian Diesch’s answer: Alt+F opens “File”, D opens “New Documents” and E is for “Empty Document”.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

Community

1

answered Jun 05 '15 at 12:14

Rinzwind

309,379

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 05 '15 at 12:06

5

If there is no blank space you have to use New Document » Empty Document from the File menu.

answered Jun 05 '15 at 12:06

Florian Diesch

89,643

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 05 '15 at 15:47

5

The canonical command to create an empty file is indeed touch.

From the command line, enter touch <filename(including full path)>.

(Although, beware arguments containing spaces.)

answered Jun 05 '15 at 15:47

Popup

151
4

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 05 '15 at 14:33

1

You could just use the cd command to move to your folder step by step from the terminal and then use any editor to create a file, such as

cd Desktop/../..
nano a

This opens "a" file. Just save the file by clicking Ctrl+o and exit with Ctrl+x. Two dots ".." is for parent directory.

edited Jun 05 '15 at 14:33

gman

2,324

answered Jun 05 '15 at 12:12

Sarvesh

11

How can I create a new blank file in an occupied directory?

4 Answers4