Concatenate multiple files but include filename as section headers
I would like to concatenate a number of text files into one large file in terminal. I know I can do this using the cat command. However, I would like the filename of each file to precede the "data dump" for that file. Anyone know how to do this?
what I currently have:
file1.txt = bluemoongoodbeer
file2.txt = awesomepossum
file3.txt = hownowbrowncow
cat file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
desired output:
file1
bluemoongoodbeer
file2
awesomepossum
file3
hownowbrowncow
Was looking for the same thing, and found this to suggest:
tail -n +1 file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
Output:
==> file1.txt <==
<contents of file1.txt>
==> file2.txt <==
<contents of file2.txt>
==> file3.txt <==
<contents of file3.txt>
If there is only a single file then the header will not be printed. If using GNU utils, you can use -v
to always print a header.
I used grep for something similar:
grep "" *.txt
It does not give you a 'header', but prefixes every line with the filename.
This should do the trick as well:
find . -type f -print -exec cat {} \;
Means:
find = linux `find` command finds filenames, see `man find` for more info
. = in current directory
-type f = only files, not directories
-print = show found file
-exec = additionally execute another linux command
cat = linux `cat` command, see `man cat`, displays file contents
{} = placeholder for the currently found filename
\; = tell `find` command that it ends now here
You further can combine searches trough boolean operators like -and
or -or
. find -ls
is nice, too.
This should do the trick:
for filename in file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt; do
echo "$filename"
cat "$filename"
done > output.txt
or to do this for all text files recursively:
find . -type f -name '*.txt' -print | while read filename; do
echo "$filename"
cat "$filename"
done > output.txt