Shell script: put some text in the first line

[Sharvil Desai]

Can anyone please tell me what is the best way to add some text to the first line of a file that already exists and has lots of lines? Thank you!

[Pete Randall]

There's most likely a better way but this would certainly work:

echo "text" > file.new
cat file >> file.new
mv file.new file


Pete

[Sharvil Desai]

That would work, but I am hoping that someone can think of a better way. If noone can come up with a way then I will gladly accept your answer and assign points. Thank you.

[Sharvil Desai]

That would work, but I am hoping that someone can think of a better way. If noone can come up with a better way then I will gladly accept your answer and assign points. Thank you.

[Hai Nguyen_1]

Sharvil,

Try this:

# echo "new first line text here" | cat - yourfile | tee yourfile

Hai

[Hai Nguyen_1 · Accepted solution]

Sharvil,

if you want to suppress the ouptput from the above command, then try this:

# echo "new first line text here" | cat - yourfile | tee yourfile >/dev/null

Hai

[Sharvil Desai]

Thank you both!
I like Hai Nguyen's answer.
Everyone gets points!

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

If you like:

# awk 'BEGIN{print "INSERTED_TEXT!"};{print $0}' filename > filename.new
# mv filename.new filename

Regards!

...JRF...

[Chris Vail]

Just use vi, or your favorite text editor.
If you're not familiar with vi, here's a quick primer:
vi filename
O (thats capital "O", not zero) to "open" the first line.
Type your text.
:wq (thats the key, followed by the colon, then the w (write) then q (quit). You're done.


Chris

[Curtis Larson_2]

it does depend on where you want to add your text, beginning, end, somewhere in the middle.

you can use sed, awk, ex. to do this.

file.tmp
mv file.tmp file
use a for appending text
i for insert text at the begining
s for subtitution, or changes somewhere in the middle