echo -n is not working in zsh

Question

I am trying to truncate a file in Red Hat 4.8.5-11. I have zsh+prezto installed on my system. I am getting error: "zsh: file exists: {file_name}"

I am running following command:

echo -n > {file_name}

Same command is running just fine in bash. What could possibly be wrong?

Have you tried running the same command using `sudo` i.e `sudo echo -n > ` — Cyclonecode, Feb 20 '17 at 12:12
I did. Infact, I am working as a root user -I know thats a bad habit. But it is my local system I can afford the luxury of deleting something accidentally :) — Geek, Feb 20 '17 at 12:14
Can you edit your question and show the exact command you're running and the output from the same? — Cyclonecode, Feb 20 '17 at 12:16

Wolph · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-20T16:37:58.093

3

This is caused by the no-clobbering setting which protects you from accidently overwriting a file: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Options.html#index-file-clobbering_002c-allowing

You can either force it using the pipe character:

echo -n >| {file_name}

Or you can disable this behaviour by enabling clobbering:

setopt clobber

edited Feb 20 '17 at 16:37

answered Feb 20 '17 at 12:25

Wolph

1 Answers1