Insert at top of file?

[Ian McClement_1]

Hi
Is there a way to redirect output to the top of a file, like >> but to go to top, without removing the file, inserting, then appending the old contents?

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Ian

[Vincenzo Restuccia]

#top -f file_name

[federico_3]

If i have two files ( let's say file1 and file2 ) and i want write file1 at the top of file2 i could use the following:

cat file1 file2 > file3

[CHRIS_ANORUO]

Create a file appfile, then append the newfile to the newly created file

i.e copy file to appfile
then newfile >> appfile

[Ian McClement_1]

Sorry, what I meant was if I have a file

firstline
secondline
thirdline

I would like to redirect the output of a command to the top of this file resulting in

textoutput
firstline
secondline
thirdline

Thanks
Ian

[Kofi ARTHIABAH]

Ian:

to achieve what you want, you must have an intervening/temporary files eg.:

echo $STRING > /tmp/prepend ; cat /tmp/prepend $YOURFILE > /tmp/finalfile ; mv /tmp/finalfile $YOURFILE ; rm /tmp/prepend

you could actually alias the above string (or some other incarnation of it)

good luck

[Abel Berger]

Hi all,

I don?t remember, but maybe this its possible
whith ed command.

I hope this helps

Abel Berger

[federico_3]

If you have file1:

firstline
secondline
thirdline

redirect the output of a command to a file
output > file2

and then:
cat file2 file1 > file3

you'll see in file3:

textoutput
firstline
secondline
thirdline

[Fritz-Gerald: Zephir]

Hi Ian,

Here's another simple way
logFile.new contains:
firstLine
secondLine
thirdLine

One way could be :

mv logFile.new logFile.old
yourcommand > logFile.new | cat logFile.old >> logFile.new

logFile.new now contains:

firstLine
secondLine
thirdLine

But then again, tell us what is it you intend to do.

There might be an easier way using the "tail" command.

regards,
Fritz

[Curtis Larson_1]

#!/usr/bin/ksh

ex -s yourfile <0 r !yourSystemCommand
wq
EOF