Using the >> operator will append data at the end of the file, while using the > will overwrite the contents of the file if already existing.
Two quick options for combining text files.Open the two files you want to merge. Select all text (Command+A/Ctrl+A) from one document, then paste it into the new document (Command+V/Ctrl+V). Repeat steps for the second document. This will finish combining the text of both documents into one.
Type the cat command followed by the file or files you want to add to the end of an existing file. Then, type two output redirection symbols ( >> ) followed by the name of the existing file you want to add to.
You need the cat
(short for concatenate) command, with shell redirection (>
) into your output file
cat 1.txt 2.txt 3.txt > 0.txt
Another option, for those of you who still stumble upon this post like I did, is to use find -exec
:
find . -type f -name '*.txt' -exec cat {} + >> output.file
In my case, I needed a more robust option that would look through multiple subdirectories so I chose to use find
. Breaking it down:
find .
Look within the current working directory.
-type f
Only interested in files, not directories, etc.
-name '*.txt'
Whittle down the result set by name
-exec cat {} +
Execute the cat command for each result. "+" means only 1 instance of cat
is spawned (thx @gniourf_gniourf)
>> output.file
As explained in other answers, append the cat-ed contents to the end of an output file.
if you have a certain output type then do something like this
cat /path/to/files/*.txt >> finalout.txt
If all your files are in single directory you can simply do
cat * > 0.txt
Files 1.txt,2.txt, .. will go into 0.txt
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