Cat with heredoc does not work in zsh shell

Question

When I try

cat > myfile << EOF
TEST TEXT
EOF

I just get an empty file. The same using echo command. What's going on? I can only think about something conflicting in the .zshenv profile file, but I have no idea about what it could be...

I am using zsh 4.3.6 (x86_64-suse-linux-gnu).

Update It now works with zsh 5.0.5 (x86_64-suse-linux-gnu)

works for me in Zsh 5.0.5. Please start zsh with `zsh -f` and retry. `zsh -f` is to ignore any configuration files you have, i.e. that is a zsh with all configs at default values. — Francisco, Jul 10 '14 at 08:14

score 10 · Answer 1 · edited Feb 01 '16 at 06:03

10

Here is another way to write it:

cat <<eos > filename
foo bar baz
eos

That works in zsh.

edited Feb 01 '16 at 06:03

sujeet

310
2
8

answered Apr 16 '15 at 20:15

Rob Jens

584
6
8

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 07 '14 at 21:50

This could happen if your /tmp (or wherever your $TMPDIR points) were read-only.

You should be able to discover what's wrong by attaching strace to the zsh you're running the above from, using e.g. strace -ff -s200 -o /tmp/zsh.log -p PID-goes-here from a different shell.

Cat with heredoc does not work in zsh shell

2 Answers2