how to clean a textfile in Linux

[bad_brain]

alright, this is just a very tiny HowTo, but I think it is very useful.
when you're working on Linux there are plenty of log files, some of them grow really big after a while (especially the logs for apps you installed by hand, they don't use any log rotation in many cases).
usually you download the logs and analyze/store them, and to save space it would be the best to empty the old log file, right?
I use the vi editor, but there is no way to flush the whole content of a file, you can only delete lines, like:

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1000dd

this would delete 1000 lines below the cursor, but that's not very comfy especially because you don't know how many lines the file has.

but yesterday I found a nice solution, seems it was too easy to discover it earlier..
let's say the logfile is named some_log, you can flush the whole content simply by:

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> some_log

what it does? it simply writes "nothing" to the file and overwrites anything in it.
and voila: file is nice and clean again...

[computathug]

cheers b_b, im sure this will come in handy

[ayu]

agreed ^^ will have to try this later, thanks b_b