Differences between revisions 9 and 12 (spanning 3 versions)
Revision 9 as of 2011-03-15 17:02:32
Size: 903
Editor: GreyCat
Comment: ed
Revision 12 as of 2017-02-14 19:48:12
Size: 903
Editor: GreyCat
Comment: Sorry, but the substitution-inside-here-doc is not safe. There's no guarantee bash will slurp the old content before overwriting it.
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How do I prepend a text to a file (the opposite of >>)?

You cannot do it with bash redirections alone; the opposite of >> does not exist....

To insert content at the beginning of a file, you can use an editor, for example ex:

ex file << EOF
0a
header line 1
header line 2
.
w
EOF

or ed:

printf '%s\n' 0a "line 1" "line 2" . w | ed -s file

ex will also add a newline character to the end of the file if it's missing.

Or you can rewrite the file, using things like:

{ echo line; cat file ;} >tmpfile && mv tmpfile file
echo line | cat - file > tmpfile && mv tmpfile file

Some people insist on using the sed hammer to pound in all the screws:

sed "1iTEXTTOPREPEND" filename > tmp &&
mv tmp filename

There are lots of other solutions as well.

BashFAQ/090 (last edited 2017-02-14 19:48:12 by GreyCat)