echozshprezto

echo -n is not working in zsh

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?

Solution

  • 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