Insert Text at Beginning of File in Linux

Linux provides various commands to process the text files. Sometimes we may need to insert a text at the beginning of a file. This tutorial shows how to do this in Linux.

Create a new file for testing:

printf "Line2\nLine3\nLine4\n" > test.txt

Text files can be processed with sed command. Execute the following command to insert a text at the beginning of a file:

sed -i "1s/^/Line1\n/" test.txt

The -i option will edit file in-place. The 1s indicates the first line of file. The ^ means the beginning of the line.