input a line at the beginning of every file in a directory?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

if need to input a word or anything at the beginning of every file in a directory. how do i accomplish this?

say the file is named hyperten. how do i make hyperten the first line of every file in a given directory?

thanks

2

cd to the destination directory and execute following script:

#!/bin/sh

find -maxdepth 1 -type f | while IFS= read vo
do
echo "some_string\
" > .tmp
cat "$vo" >> .tmp
mv .tmp "$vo"
done
3

The -maxdepth is not available for all versions of find.
You can also use this more obscure syntax :

find . \( -type d ! -name . -prune  \) -o  -type f

Jean-Pierre.

4

when i run that script this is what i get:

find: path-list predicate-list

this is the script i'm running. the line "/var/scripts/scramble" is what i want to put in the beginning of every file in the directory.

#!/bin/sh

find -maxdepth 1 -type f | while IFS= read vo
do
echo "/var/scripts/scramble\
" > .tmp
cat "$vo" >> .tmp
mv .tmp "$vo"
done

5

sorry guys. i have decided it would be best to add the line to a place other than the first line of the files.

now how do i do that? i need to input that one line script at the beginning of my files, right after the #!/bin/sh line

i thought sed could do this? wrong?

6

You can use sed (to insert the control/J character noted ^J do Ctrl/V Ctrl/J) :

#!/bin/sh

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f | \
while IFS= read vo
do
   sed '\_#!/bin/sh_a\^Jsome string' "$vo" > .tmp
   mv .tmp "$vo"
done

Jean-Pierre.

7

thanks guys