Probably typographic error in tutorial 2

Hello,

I think in tutorial 2 (https://git.scm.com/docs/gittutorial-2) in the first code box the second time that file.txt is edited ($ echo 'hello world!' >file.txt) there should be an additional ">" because a single one will overwrite the contents. As far as i understand from what follows bellow, the text should be appended.

Kind Regards, N.Antonetsis

On Sun, Apr 27, 2025 at 5:44 PM el24614 <el24614@mail.ntua.gr> wrote:

Presumably you're talking about this example?

    $ echo 'hello world' > file.txt
    $ git add .
    $ git commit -a -m "initial commit"
    ...
    $ echo 'hello world!' >file.txt
    $ git commit -a -m "add emphasis"

Note that the initial content of `file.txt` is "hello world", whereas the updated content is "hello world!" with trailing exclamation point, so the content of the file does change (indeed, the commit message "add emphasis" hints at the way in which it changes). As such, the example appears to be fine as-is and does not need to be changed to use ">>" instead of ">".

That's not to say the example is ideal since the difference of "!" is potentially difficult to spot. Had it instead been:

    $ echo 'HELLO WORLD' >file.txt

or some other more obvious change, it probably would have been better. Please feel free to submit a patch to improve the documentation if you think such a change would help.

Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> writes:

Or append "Goodbye world" to pair well with the first sentence?

By the way, I noticed that the URL given in the original post gives a log-in page. IT IS *NOT* the git-scm.com that is associated with this project, but is somebody else.

The URL the original poster meant is probably

    https://git-scm.com/docs/gittutorial-2

I do not think the typo is malicious, though, and scm.com itself is run by folks who have valid reasons to own the domain.