Concatenate multiple files into a single file object without creating a new file

Question

This question is related to Python concatenate text files

I have a list of file_names, like [\'file1.txt\', \'file2.txt\', ...].

I wou

Answer 1

Use input from fileinput module. It reads from multiple files but makes it look like the strings are coming from a single file. (Lazy line iteration).

import fileinput

files= ['F:/files/a.txt','F:/files/c.txt','F:/files/c.txt']

allfiles = fileinput.input(files)

for line in allfiles: # this will iterate over lines in all the files
    print(line)

# or read lines like this: allfiles.readline()

If you need all the text in one place use StringIO

import io

files= ['F:/files/a.txt','F:/files/c.txt','F:/files/c.txt']


lines = io.StringIO()   #file like object to store all lines

for file_dir in files:
    with open(file_dir, 'r') as file:
        lines.write(file.read())
        lines.write('\n')

lines.seek(0)        # now you can treat this like a file like object
print(lines.read())