echo “0r header.txt
w” | ed myfile.txt

In that case

echo “text”|cat – yourfile > /tmp/out && mv /tmp/out yourfile

works for me

Thanks for help :)

diff -u <(head myfile) <(echo -e "my data goes here and ends at the period.\n`head myfile`") > mypatch; patch mypatch

diff -u <(head myfile)  mypatch; patch mypatch

echo -e “0a\nmy data goes here and ends at the period.\n.\n,wq” | ed myfile

diff -u <(head myfile) mypatch; patch mypatch

What the above SHOULD look like:

From http://sed.sourceforge.net/grabbag/tutorials/sedfaq.txt:

sed '1{h; r file_to_prepend.txt
D; }
2{x; G; }' < file_to_be_prepended

This can be used to insert a file into any line but the last one into a second file. For instance, to insert file1 into file2 at line 10:

sed '10{h; r file1
D; }
11{x; G; }' <file2

Edited by Admin – added formatting html tags

It’s also in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, which is more authoritative at the cost of a subscription, and it’s even a command in the popular jQuery javascript library. However, I agree prefix would be more proper English if one cares and has an educated audience that would not be confused.

perl -pi -e ‘print “Put before first line\n” if $. == 1′ inFile.txt

(from the perl FAQ):

echo “my_prepend_text_goes_here” | tac biglist.txt – | tac > biglist5.txt

There are a couple of tricks where you can avoid needing to create biglist5.txt in the process (storing results to a variable or using “tee” to write your output), but I can’t find anything that will work on large files.

sed -i -e ‘s/^/PREFIX/’ file_with_lines_to_prefix.txt