Create a file if it doesn’t exist

If you don’t need atomicity you can use os module:

import os

if not os.path.exists('/tmp/test'):
    os.mknod('/tmp/test')

UPDATE:

As Cory Klein mentioned, on Mac OS for using os.mknod() you need a root permissions, so if you are Mac OS user, you may use open() instead of os.mknod()

import os

if not os.path.exists('/tmp/test'):
    with open('/tmp/test', 'w'): pass