I can't open rtf files created using the 'touch' command in Terminal

Question

I don't know much about CLI but I like to play with my tech. When I create an RTF file using
touch foo.rtf
it creates the file but when I try and open it, it just says "The document “foo.rtf” could not be opened."
What's the deal?

Answer 1

Answered Here on StackOverflow:
As you've likely discovered, touching a nonexistent file will create a zero-byte file with the name you specify. (touch is also used to update the modification time on an existing file. Seeman touch for further details.)
The problem you're running into is that though a completely empty file is valid HTML, text, or Markdown, it is not valid RTF—this is true of many file formats, actually, which are structured in a particular way and require some data to be present be valid.
Based on my experimentation, the bare minimum RTF file appears to be
{\rtf1}
If you'd like to create a blank RTF file from the shell, try this:
echo '{\rtf1}' >Foo.rtf
Note the above will overwrite Foo.rtf if it exists.
Thank you user Zigg