That would break a very large number of existing scripts that depend on being able to replace a file with a traditional ">" redirection. You can set it as the

That would break a very large number of existing scripts that depend on being able to replace a file with a traditional ">" redirection. You can set it as the default for your own interactive shell if you want by adding set -o noclobber to your ~/.bashrc file. It is probably a good idea to add it after the line that check if it is being used non-interactively, which probably looks something like this if [[ $- != *i* ]] ; then # Shell is non-interactive return fi # add interactive-shell-only settings here While you're editing .bashrc, you may want to also add these options that are available in modern bash that I find make the experience a lot nicer. # support new glob patterns like !(foo|bar|...) # for example, this move everything EXCPET the .h files # mv !(*.h) /some/dir/ shopt -s extglob # support ** in globs to match zero-or-more-recursive-directories shopt -s globstar # if you're annoyed at having to type "nohup" to prevent # programs from closing when you close the shell window shopt -u huponexit