Edit file using terminal

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June 21st, 2007, 10:06 AM

Invalid02

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Edit file using terminal

Hey,

I'm new to Mac and OS X - how would I go about editing an existing file, and writing a string to it just using terminal, and preferably without installing any addons to achieve this functionality?

Thanks for your time,

-Ross

[edit]

I should also mention, I need to pass the contents of the file in as arguments, not open up an editor then have to type them in...

Last edited by Invalid02 : June 21st, 2007 at 10:16 AM.

June 22nd, 2007, 02:55 AM

edman007

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well you probably would have gotten a faster response if you asked this in the Linux forum as its the same answer

anyways, some text editors that are preinstalled on a Mac are pico and emacs, if you don't want a text editor (sounds like you just want to script this), but since you said you don't want an editor there are a few options

if your just adding a line to the end of the file this will work

bash Code:

Original - bash Code
#put "my string" at the end of the file echo "my string" >> /path/to/file #or to read it out of a file cat /path/to/file1 >> /path/to/file2 #the above will append file1 to file2

#put "my string" at the end of the file
echo "my string" >> /path/to/file
#or to read it out of a file
cat /path/to/file1 >> /path/to/file2
#the above will append file1 to file2

if you need something else then you need to explain your situation better, to me it almost sounds like your looking to patch a file (and would need diff/patch) or your trying to edit a file which may be better suited for sed/awk

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