I have destroyed a bunch of non-essential files and I don't know why. I have been executing commands like:tr -sc 'A-Za-z' '\n' > somefile.txt | lessthere is no output (blank page with flashing END) and upon checking all the content from the file is erased. Another command that erased a full text file grep someword > someotherfile.txt  | less
Why do I keep destroying my text files?
shell;text processing;io redirection
The > operator means take the output of the command, truncate the named file, and then write the output of the command to that.Reading that command line I guess you want <, which is read standard input from this file, and feed it to the command instead.