How to do it...

To generate blank files in bulk, follow these steps:

1. Invoking the touch command with a non-existent filename creates an empty file:

        $ touch filename

1. Generate bulk files with a different name pattern:

        for name in {1..100}.txt 
        do 
          touch $name 
        done 

In the preceding code, {1..100} will be expanded to a string 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...100. Instead of {1..100}.txt, we can use various shorthand patterns such as test{1..200}.c, test{a..z}.txt, and so on.

If a file already exists, the touch command changes all timestamps associated with the file to the current time. These options define a subset of timestamps to be modified:

• touch -a: This modifies the access time
• touch -m: This modifies the modification time

Instead of the current time, we can specify the time and date:

      $ touch -d "Fri Jun 25 20:50:14 IST 1999" filename

The date string used with -d need not be in this exact format. It will accept many simple date formats. We can omit time from the string and provide only dates such as Jan 20, 2010.