How to create text file in a directory and add text to it in one command from terminal

Question

I'm doing an assignment on terminal commands in Ubuntu. The problem I'm currently stuck on asks me to create a text file in a directory I'm not currently in, and add text to it, all using one command. I was trying to run it as:

touch /home/user/Desktop/index.html
echo "text" > index.html
...

but keep getting errors.

Answer 1

You also need to specify the path when writing "text" into the file:

touch /home/user/Desktop/index.html; echo "text" > /home/user/Desktop/index.html

Also, there's no need to touch the file first. The > operator will automatically create the file if it doesn't exist, so you can just type:

echo "text" > /home/user/Desktop/index.html

Answer 2

cat > /the/directory/your_file
hello world!
foo bar
baz
^D

comments:

• the part between cat... and ^D is text you enter.
• ^D (control-D) is an End-of-File marker you type to tell the program, cat, that that is the end of the file you just created, your_file.
• If you now do cat /the/directory/your_file , (NOTE: no redirection operator '>' here,). you will see the contents of the file you just created.
• Be sure to type only one ^D (control-D); if you hit it twice you will find yourself logged out from the terminal...; the second ^D went to your terminal and told it 'End-of-File', which to it means, bye bye, aka. 'exit'.

Answer 3

Also you can use printf :

printf 'Hello\nworld' > /home/user/Desktop/index.html