Unwanted line break using echo and cat

Question

I\'m trying to add a line at the beginning of a file, using

echo \'time/F:x1:x2\' | cat - file.txt>newfile.txt

But this produces line breaks

Answer 1

How about

{ echo 'time/F:x1:x2'; cat file.txt; } >newfile.txt

or

sed '1i\
time/F:x1:x2' file.txt > newfile.txt