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How would one go about using sed in order to insert

rm -rf

at the start of each line of a file?

THE DOCTOR
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3 Answers3

52
sed 's/^/rm -rf /' filename

EDIT

Xargs would be simpler way to delete all of the files listed in another file

xargs -a filename rm -rf
mikerobi
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  • @Dennis Williamson, nice tip, I pretty much only ever call xargs, when I'm piping in output from another program, so I would never have bothered figuring that out. – mikerobi Nov 02 '10 at 18:50
0

Sometimes you have to go with the original method using sed, especially when you want to do things like 

csf -d ipaddr.

xargs doesn't seem to like the output created by some commands and gives up after the first line. ie: 

sed 's/^/csf -d /' hacks >>hacks.sh
user692942
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Matt Sonnentag
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You should use

    #if you want to add only to each line matching string
    sed 's/\(^matchingstring.*$\)/"yourtext" \1/' myfile.txt
    
   #if you want to add to each line
    sed 's/^/"yourtext"/' myfile.text
Aditya Malviya
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