linux - Add a header to a tab delimited file

Question

I'd like to add a header to a tab-delimited file but I am not sure how to do it in one line in linux.

Let us say my file is:

roger18columbianew york

albert21dartmouthnew london

etc...

and now I'd like to add a header that says:

nameageuniversitycity

How would I do that in one line in linux? I am ok with awk, sed, cat, etc. not familiar at all with perl though.

Answer 1

There isn't a "prepend" operator like the "append" operator >>, but you can write the header to a temp-file, copy your file's contents into the temp-file after that, and move it back:

echo -e "nameageuniversitycity" | cat - yourfile > /tmp/out && mv /tmp/out yourfile