Adding lines of text to beginning of a text file

BillKat · 01-19-2009, 09:06 AM

Hi folks,

I need to insert 3-4 lines of text to the beginning of a text file. The file is a largish MYSQL dump, the result of a backup shell script. This shell script should insert the required text.

I've wrestled with sed, but lost ... Any ideas would be much appreciated, cheers.

colucix · 01-19-2009, 10:08 AM

There are a lot of ways to do that. A sed command is 'i' which stats for insert a new line before the pattern. Specify only the first line as address and the trick is done:

Code:

sed -i.bak '1i text to add' file

BillKat · 01-19-2009, 10:40 AM

Thanks for that, job done.