51.11 Making an Arbitrary-Size File for Testing

The yes command ( 23.4 ) outputs text over and over. If you need a file of some size for testing, make it with yes and head ( 25.20 ) . For example, to make a file 100k (102,400) characters long, with 12,800 8-character lines (7 digits and a newline), type:

% 

yes 1234567 | head -12800 > 100k-file

NOTE: On some UNIX systems, that command may "hang" and need to be killed with CTRL-c - because head keeps reading input from the pipe. If it hangs on your system, replace head -12800 with sed 12800q .