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This article will let us explore different ways to write files in bash. Files can be appended or overwritten as required. Let's see how we can do it.

Different ways to write/overwrite files in Bash

We will see several operators, such as >and >>, for overwriting files and appending output to files. In addition, we will explore teethe command for overwriting and appending single and multiple files.

Overwriting files using the > operator

>Operator is used to overwrite a file. For example, the following code is used to overwrite a file.

echo "Overwriting in the file" > test.txt

The above command overwrites the test.txt file if it exits; otherwise, it creates a new one. echo is not usually used because it does not support text formatting.

We use printfinstead of printf for formatted text echo. The following example shows the use of printf to overwrite a file.

printf "overwriting using the printf \n now in next line" > test.txt

The above command will format the string and printfadd a new line after .

Use the >> operator to write to a file

>>Operator is used to append content at the end of a file. For example, the following command is used to append data to a file named test.txt.

echo "Append in the file" >> test.txt

Use vim command to write files

The vim editor is also used to edit the contents of a file. For example, the following code will open the test.sh file in the vim editor.

sudo vim test.sh

After opening the vim editor, add the following script to perform the file writing operation.

#! /bin/bash
echo "Enter Student Name"
read yourName
echo $yourName > test.txt
echo "Enter age"
read age
echo $age >> test.txt
cat test.txt

After adding the code, press ESC and type w to close the file. Now bash test.shrun the file using .

The above script shows two methods of writing to a file. In line 4, we use >the operator, which overwrites the file. In line 7, >>the operator is used, which does not overwrite the previous content and appends the string to a new line.

Use tee command to write to a file

If we want to perform write operations to a file and the console at the same time, we can use teethe command. It takes input and writes the string to the file and the console at the same time.

Using teethe command, we can see in the console what is being written in the file. teeThe command is also used to overwrite and append files.

The following command is used to overwrite using tee command.

echo "Testing the Tee Command" | tee test.txt

The above command will |write the string input from the pipe to the console and to the file at the same time.

The -a flag teeis used with the test command to append a file. For example, the following code will append the test Tee command to the test.txt file.

echo "Testing the Tee Command" | tee -a test.txt

Sometimes, we may need to write the contents from multiple files at the same time. We can teedo this using the command by specifying the names of all the files separated by a single space.

The following bashcommand demonstrates writing content to multiple files:

echo "Writing text to the multiple files" | tee test1.txt test2.txt test3.txt

The above command writes the input string both in the console and in three text files.