How To Create Large Files for Testing

Sometimes you need to create a large file for testing. The command line tool dd is an easy way to create large files filled with random data.

I recently found myself needing to test uploading and downloading files of various sizes. So I wanted a quick way to create several files, each of very specific size. Almost all UNIX-like systems, including Linux and macOS, provide a tool called dd that makes this job easy.

The dd command is a low-level copying tool. Apparently, it's original intent...