Hey all

I'm looking for a way to insert the number of lines in a file to the start of the aformentioned file. This should be simple but as I am not used to scripts in Linux, I am finding it tough going.

I can find the number of lines in a file easily enough via

filesize=$(awk 'END {print NR}' $1)

but as for inserting this into the first line, i'm failing to do so. I've tried some of the other approaches on these forums but none so far have been able to do so.

I've tried:
sed '1i\$filesize' $1
but sed i requires a string, not a variable so no go

I've also tried:
mv "$1" "${1}.bak" 2>/dev/null || touch "${1}.bak"
cat $filesize "${1}.bak" >"$1"

but again with no luck as cat seems to need an input stream

Would someone be able to illuminate me with a good way to do so?

Just to recap, i want to insert a line at the start of a given file that holds the number of lines the original file has.

ie the file:
a
b
c
d
e

should become:
5
a
b
c
d
e

Thanks in advance

Hmmm, it is almost exactly what i need, thank you for the quick response. Much appreciated

my only issue is it also prints the name of the file as well as num=$(wc -l $filename) outputs lines as well as filename

In case anyone else is interested, i changed it slightly to this. It creates a backup of the original while appending the original file with the number of lines at start (note: it only appends number of lines, nothing else)


num=$(awk 'END {print NR}' $filename)
cp $filename ${filename}.bak

echo $num > $filename
cat ${filename}.bak >> $filename


thanks again for the help

Lars

Yeah, sorry, was doing it off the top of my head. You can just amend the 1st line