shell script to remove a file if it already exist

Question

I am working on some stuff where I am storing data in a file  But each time I run the script it gets appended to the previous file   I want help on how I can remove the file if it already exists

User · Answer

Something like this would work     bin sh  if   -fe FILE   then      rm FILE fi    -f checks if it s a regular file  -e checks if the file exist     Introduction to if for more information   EDIT   -e used with -f is redundant  fo using -f alone should work too

User · Answer

Don t bother checking if the file exists  just try to remove it     rm -f  p a t h   or rm  p a t h 2 gt   dev null   Note that the second command will fail  return a non-zero exit status  if the file did not exist  but the first will succeed owing to the -f  short for --force  option   Depending on the situation  this may be an important detail   But more likely  if you are appending to the file it is because your script is using  gt  gt  to redirect something into the file   Just replace  gt  gt  with  gt    It s hard to say since you ve provided no code   Note that you can do something like test -f  p a t h  amp  amp  rm  p a t h  but doing so is completely pointless   It is quite possible that the test will return true but the  p a t h will fail to exist before you try to remove it  or worse the test will fail and the  p a t h will be created before you execute the next command which expects it to not exist   Attempting this is a classic race condition   Don t do it

User · Answer

If you want to ignore the step to check if file exists or not  then you can use a fairly easy command  which will delete the file if exists and does not throw an error if it is non-existing     rm -f xyz csv

User · Answer

if      ls  lt file gt       then rm  lt file gt   fi  Also  if you redirect your output with  gt  instead of  gt  gt  it will overwrite the previous file

User · Answer

A one liner shell script to remove a file if it already exist  based on Jindra Helcl s answer      -f file    amp  amp  rm file  or with a variable      bin bash  file   path to file ext    -f  file    amp  amp  rm  file

User · Answer

You can use this     bin bash  file  quot file you want to delete quot   if   -f  quot  file quot      then     rm  quot  file quot  fi

User · Answer

Another one line command I used is     -e file    amp  amp  rm file

[shell] shell script to remove a file if it already exist

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