Concatenating files from multiple subdirectories

catcommand linefile managementterminal

Say I have a directory structure that looks like this:

file1.txt
folder1/
    file2.txt
folder2/
    file3.txt

How can I concatenate file1.txt, file2.txt, and file3.txt into a single file?

Edit: This directory structure is only an example. The question is about how to concatenate files from subfolders given any directory structure and any number of files.

Best Answer

cat file1.txt folder1/file2.txt folder2/file3.txt > single.txt

Related Solutions

Zip into separate files

My technique for this is not tools based, but very simple (apologies if you are looking for a tool)

select files in the folder until the total size is almost 2GB
right-click for context menu
add to zip file
name (file1.zip, file2.zip etc)
repeat until all files in folder are zipped

Printing multiple files with lpr

The lpr man page states:

-hheader       Specify  a title to be used on the banner page (if any).
               Default title is the name of the file.

And nothing else concerning this (meaning, as it states: "Default title is the name of the file", as you didn't pass the -h parameter). So it looks like a misbehaviour, at least at first sight. On a second look, I notice your -p parameter:

-p             Add pr(1) style headers to each page (text only)

Taking a look at the pr(1) man page:

use a centered HEADER instead of filename in page header, -h  ""
prints a blank line, don't use -h""

My guess would be that this "centered header" is only calculated once, instead for each file separately. So you could try your both approaches without the -p parameter to check whether that introduces the problem -- or try a third approach:

for myfile in file*.txt; do lpr -p $myfile; done

which would invoke lpr for each file separately, and thus get you rid of the described problem.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Zip into separate files

Printing multiple files with lpr

Related Question