UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Has anyone ever encountered text from other files suddenly appearing in another data file that is not being used. There does not seem to be any reason for it, any thoughts would be useful.

Thanks

Perhaps an unintended side effect of redirection?

programname >/path/to/datafile 2>&1 would cause data and error messages to be sent to the same file. You might not notice anything wrong unless errors or warnings occurred.

Or perhaps the text is not actually appearing in the files, and is just being broadcasted to your terminal, i.e. an old fashioned wall message like "the machine is shutting down NOW".

"Suddenly appearing"?

Does this mean contents of file changed from before but the file appears not to have been modified?

Filesystem corruption is a possibility.

Is the file on a local filesystem, or remote?

Is that a persistent change? Does it appear in the middle of the file, at the start, end?

So the problem is occurring on a local system where I have data files that are ok at one point then at some point in the future (weeks, months) text from other files occurs at various locations in the data files. There does not seems to be a consistent location within the data files. The data files themselves are not do not seem to be altered based on the timestamp but the text is in there as the files are not usable and I have to recreate them. I thought maybe there was some error in some code I had written that caused this but I have gone through and everything seems legit so I am at a loss for what is causing it.

Without seeing the code, we can't possibly guess.

The code is unrelated to any of the files which is why I say it's not an issue.