How to create a file and insert a line in it using OS X terminal
Quick Answer
touch ~/.inputrc
echo "set completion-ignore-case On" >> ~/.inputrc
Explanation
First, create the file:
touch ~/.inputrc
Then, add the contents to the file:
echo "set completion-ignore-case On" >> ~/.inputrc
touch
creates an empty file (assuming that the ~/.inputrc
file does not already exist). echo
writes text to the "standard output" ("stdout" for short), which is normally your screen, but because of the redirection (>>
), the output is redirected to ~/.inputrc
. This setup will append the line to the file.
If ~/.inputrc
already exists and you want to erase (clobber) its contents, and then write the line into it (i.e., create a file with only this line of text), do:
echo "set completion-ignore-case On" > ~/.inputrc
The single arrow (>
), a.k.a. "greater than" symbol, tells echo
to create a file with only the given text as the contents of the file, instead of writing the contents to the end of the file. (Actually, echo
does not create the file; the shell creates the file, discarding any existing contents, and the echo
command writes the new contents.)
If you use the first approach (with the >>
) and you find that the line that you added is smushed onto the previous line, e.g.,
some stuff here some more stuff hereset completion-ignore-case On
then you need to edit the file to fix it.
This would happen if the last line of the pre-existing file ended with a textual character rather than a "newline" character (i.e., an end-of-line marker). This is common for .TXT
files on Windows, but rare on *nix.
If you somehow realize in advance that your .inputrc
file has pre-existing contents that do not end with a newline,
then you should use this echo
statement instead:
echo -e "\nset completion-ignore-case On" >> ~/.inputrc
The \n
before the phrase is interpreted as a newline character, so a newline is added after the previous contents and before the new stuff you want to add.
Or, slightly more typing but much more readable,
echo "" >> ~/.inputrc
echo "set completion-ignore-case On" >> ~/.inputrc
or
(echo ""; echo "set completion-ignore-case On") >> ~/.inputrc
which do the same thing; i.e., provide the missing newline character to the existing text, and then add the set completion-…
command after that.
All you need to do is:
echo "set completion-ignore-case On" >> ~/.inputrc
echo
simply echos the text given to it through the normal output channel (stdout)
the >>
writes the stdout output from the left hand command to the right hand file, which in your case is ~/.inputrc
~/
is the same as /home/your_username/