Bash write to file without echo?
You can do this with "cat" and a here-document.
cat <<EOF > test.txtsome textEOFOne reason for doing this would be to avoid any possibility of a password being visible in the output of ps. However, in bash and most modern shells, "echo" is a built-in command and it won't show up in ps output, so using something like this is safe (ignoring any issues with storing passwords in files, of course):
echo "$password" > test.txt
I had the problem not being able to send ">" and ended up with echo!
echo "Hello world" | dd of=test.txt
The way to do this in bash is
zsh <<< '> test <<< "Hello World!"'
This is one of the interesting differences between zsh and bash: given an unchained > or >>, zsh has the good sense to hook it up to stdin, while bash does not. It would be downright useful - if it were only standard.I tried to use this to send & append my ssh key over ssh to a remote authorized_keys file, but the remote host was bash, of course, and quietly did nothing.
And that's why you should just use cat.