Windows equivalent of 'touch' (i.e. the node.js way to create an index.html)

Question

On a windows machine I get this error

\'touch\' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Answer 1

For a very simple version of touch which would be mostly used to create a 0 byte file in the current directory, an alternative would be creating a touch.bat file and either adding it to the %Path% or copying it to the C:\Windows\System32 directory, like so:

touch.bat

@echo off
powershell New-Item %* -ItemType file

Creating a single file

C:\Users\YourName\Desktop>touch a.txt

    Directory: C:\Users\YourName\Desktop

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a----        2020-10-14  10:28 PM              0 a.txt

Creating multiple files

C:\Users\YourName\Desktop>touch "b.txt,c.txt"

    Directory: C:\Users\YourName\Desktop

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a----        2020-10-14  10:52 PM              0 b.txt
-a----        2020-10-14  10:52 PM              0 c.txt

Also

• Works both with PowerShell and the Command Prompt.
• Works with existing subdirectories.
• Does not create a file if it already exists:

New-Item : The file 'C:\Users\YourName\Desktop\a.txt' already exists.

• For multiple files, creates only the files that do not exist.
  • Accepts a comma-separated list of filenames without spaces or enclosed in quotes if spaces are necessary:

C:\Users\YourName\Desktop>touch d.txt,e.txt,f.txt
C:\Users\YourName\Desktop>touch "g.txt, 'name with spaces.txt'"