Create buffer without opening a window

I would like to create a new buffer "in the background", without opening
any new window, put some text into the buffer then write it to disk,
without ever showing the buffer (the reason why I am not populating
a List and use writefile() directly is that I need to perform some text
manipulation such as reindenting the text). I thought that something
like this would do it:

let n = bufnr('my new buffer', 1)
call setbufline(n, 1, 'hello')
call writefile(getbufline(n, 1, "$"), './foo.txt')

but the buffer stays empty and setbufline() returns 1. What should I do
instead?

Thanks,
Life.


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