what is noclobber in linux?

This tip is for people who have ever hosed important files by using > when they meant to use >>. Add the following line to .bashrc:

set -o noclobber

The noclobber option prevents you from overwriting existing files with the > operator.

In some cases you may really want to overwrite the file. In this case, instead of turning noclobber off, you can use >! to force the file to be written.

% program >! file

hosed： 失败，（口语一点的用法）