Here is a convenient way of creating test files using the powerful Z Shell. I have been using this shell for a short while, and I am quickly becoming a fan of it. I used it to support transfer speed tests. To support these tests, I created a specified number of files that varied in size (1MB, 5MB, 10MB, 50MB, 100MB, 500MB, etc). Here is a straightforward one-liner mkfile example of creating 50 x 12MB files and a few others using zsh’s brace expansion.

# zsh
# mkfile 12m {1..50}.tst
# ls -l
total 122960
-rw------T 1 root other 12582912 Feb 18 20:04 1.tst
-rw------T 1 root other 12582912 Feb 18 20:04 2.tst
-rw------T 1 root other 12582912 Feb 18 20:04 3.tst
-rw------T 1 root other 12582912 Feb 18 20:04 4.tst
-rw------T 1 root other 12582912 Feb 18 20:04 5.tst
...

Other examples...

# touch {1..5}.testfile
# ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:07 1.testfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:07 2.testfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:07 3.testfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:07 4.testfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:07 5.testfile

# touch {6..10}.data
# ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:30 1.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:30 10.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:30 2.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:30 3.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:30 4.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:30 5.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:30 6.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:30 7.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:30 8.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:30 9.data

# ls -l {1..5}.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:26 1.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:26 2.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:26 3.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:26 4.data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Feb 18 20:26 5.data