<> == 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 [[http://bash-hackers.org/wiki/doku.php?id=howto:edit-ed|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.