$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -e ' > open my $fh, q{>}, q{rubbish} or die $!; > print $fh qq{A longish line of text\n}; > truncate $fh, 0 or die $!; > print $fh qq{Short\n}; > close $fh or die $!;' $ cat rubbish Short $ hexdump -C rubbish 00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................| 00000010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 53 68 6f 72 74 0a |.......Short.| 0000001d $