Protecting files with noclobber

This tip is for people who have ever hosed important files by using > when they meant to use >>. Add the following line to .bashrc:

set -o noclobber.

Code Listing 1

% program > file2
bash: file2: cannot overwrite existing file

In some cases you may really want to overwrite the file. In this case, instead of turning noclobber off, you can use >! to force the file to be written.

Code Listing 2

% program >! file2 

From http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20040614-newsletter.xml