This example shows how to add a character to the beginning of each line using a sed command and bash shell.
Let's create example file.txt with some text:
add character at the beginning of each line
Add character at the beginning of each line using sed command. For example to add # in front of each line we can use sed command with following syntax:
$ sed 's/^/#/' file.txt #add #character #at the #beginning of #each line
replace # with ' ' ( space ) to add space in front of each line:
$ sed 's/^/ /' file.txt add character at the beginning of each line
Redirect the output produced by sed command to save it to a file:
$ sed 's/^/ /' file.txt > new-file.txt
$ cat new-file.txt add character at the beginning of each line