Creating an empty file in C#

Question

What\'s the simplest/canonical way to create an empty file in C#/.NET?

The simplest way I could find so far is:

System.IO.File.WriteAllLines(filename         


        

Answer 1

To avoid accidentally overwriting an existing file use:

using (new FileStream(filename, FileMode.CreateNew)) {}

...and handle the IOException which will occur if the file already exists.

File.Create, which is suggested in other answers, will overwrite the contents of the file if it already exists. In simple cases you could mitigate this using File.Exists(). However something more robust is necessary in scenarios where multiple threads and/or processes are attempting to create files in the same folder simultaneously.