paste command with file headers

Question

I have 178 files with an extension _count and I want to use paste command with the name of the file as the header, say

File1_count

abc
def 
gfh

FILE2_count

ijk
lmn
opq

FILE3_count

 rst
 uvw
 xyz

.... FILE178_count

 123
 456
 789

such that when I do paste *_count I will get the headers with the paste command as

 FILE1 FILE2  FILE3   ....  FILE178
  abc    ijk    rst            123
  def    lmn    uvw            456
  gfh    opq    xyz            789

Answer 1

you'll have to rewrite (or make temp copies) to include the fileName as the header. for f in FILE* ; do { echo "$f" ; cat $f ; } >$f.tmp && mv $f.tmp $f amd then your paste cmd. I think file1 file11 file111 will be the first 3 columns (for example), so better check that out first. You'll need to renamed files as file0001 to get a clean list Good luck. – shellter