join multiple files

Question

I am using the standard join command to join two sorted files based on column1. The command is simple join file1 file2 > output_file.

But how do I join 3 or more fil

Answer 1

Assuming you have four files A.txt, B.txt, C.txt and D.txt as:

~$ cat A.txt
x1 2
x2 3
x4 5
x5 8

~$ cat B.txt
x1 5
x2 7
x3 4
x4 6

~$ cat C.txt
x2 1
x3 1
x4 1
x5 1

~$ cat D.txt
x1 1

Join the files with:

firstOutput='0,1.2'; secondOutput='2.2'; myoutput="$firstOutput,$secondOutput"; outputCount=3; join -a 1 -a 2 -e 0 -o "$myoutput" A.txt B.txt > tmp.tmp; for f in C.txt D.txt; do firstOutput="$firstOutput,1.$outputCount"; myoutput="$firstOutput,$secondOutput"; join -a 1 -a 2 -e 0 -o "$myoutput" tmp.tmp $f > tempf; mv tempf tmp.tmp; outputCount=$(($outputCount+1)); done; mv tmp.tmp files_join.txt

Results:

~$ cat files_join.txt 
x1 2 5 0 1
x2 3 7 1 0
x3 0 4 1 0
x4 5 6 1 0
x5 8 0 1 0