Copy last line from multiple files into a single file

Question

I have a number of files in a directory. I would like to go through the directory, and put the last line of each file into a single new file. IE, this new file should contain the last line of every file in the directory. I tried using

tail -n 1 | cat > newfile.txt

but that inserted the source file name between each line. I tried writing a shell script also, but the only thing it did successfully is create the destination file and then run indefinitely without ever adding data. What is the proper way to do this? Any help is much appreciated.

Answer 1

Use find:

find . -type f -exec tail -n1 {} >> newfile.txt \;

Or if you don't want to traverse subdirectories:

find . -depth 1 -type f -exec tail -n1 {} >> newfile.txt \;