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4 comments / March 12, 2013 / sood / Linux/Unix

Insert/Add String to Beginning of a File

In a previous article, I showed you how to append a string to the end of file. Now I will show you how to insert a string to the beginning of a file in Linux. The solution is not as obvious as the former, but I will show you a quick and easy way using the standard Linux/Unix application sed.

Inserting a String to Beginning of File

  1. Suppose you had a text file with the contents and you wanted to insert a string to the beginning:
    1st line
    2nd line
    3rd line
  2. Run the command:
    sed -i '1i Top of the file!' <filename>
  3. Now the file will look like this:
    Top of the file!
    1st line
    2nd line
    3rd line

A brief explanation of the sed command parameters that we used:
-i : This will update the contents of the file and automatically save it
1i : This means, insert to the 1st line of the file

Related Posts

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  • Using 'tail' to output updates/appendings to a file in Linux
  • How to open/uncompress a .tar.bz2 file

Linux/Unix sed

4 comments… add one
  1. Girish KG May 14, 2013, 9:58 pm

    Many thanks,
    I was writing a script to automate the syslog installation with log analyzer and wanted to automate the editing of /etc/rsyslog.conf. So, I sued “sed -i ’22i $InputTCPServerRun 514′ /etc/rsyslog.conf”.

    This sed work around is also useful for me to make editing easier.

    -Girish

  2. bytesoup June 14, 2013, 4:23 am

    Perfect little one liner! Thank you!

  3. Vagelis Prokopiou March 25, 2015, 12:07 pm

    Excellent. Thank you!

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