Protecting files with noclobber
To protect files on Linux by accidently overwritten by > operator, you can use
set -o noclobber
Now if you try to overwrite a file with >, you will get error
root@ok:~# echo "Hello" > 1.txt -bash: 1.txt: cannot overwrite existing file root@ok:~#
If you really need to overwrite, use >! operator.
echo "Hello" >! FILE_NAME
Example
root@ok:~# echo "Hello" > 1.txt -bash: 1.txt: cannot overwrite existing file root@ok:~# echo "Hello" >! 1.txt root@ok:~#
Instead of running the command “set -o noclobber” everytime, you can add it to .bashrc file.