fish: Expected a string, but found a redirection

[Randommist]

When I used bash I used to create files like this >filename, but in fish I get fish: Expected a string, but found a redirection. What does this mean?

[faho]

Fish does not support running redirections without a command. This is an awkward special case in bash's grammar (actually the POSIX shell grammar) without any real need, and so it's not something fish does.

Use touch filename or : >filename. The latter of which is what bash will do implicitly.

One upside of not having this special case is that it allows you to find errors. E.g. if you accidentally do foo & >file instead of foo >file & that will error out rather than running foo with the wrong stdout.