How to append contents of multiple files into one file

Question

I want to copy the contents of five files to one file as is. I tried doing it using cp for each file. But that overwrites the contents copied from the previous file. I also

Answer 1

Another option is sed:

sed r 1.txt 2.txt 3.txt > merge.txt 

Or...

sed h 1.txt 2.txt 3.txt > merge.txt 

Or...

sed -n p 1.txt 2.txt 3.txt > merge.txt # -n is mandatory here

Or without redirection ...

sed wmerge.txt 1.txt 2.txt 3.txt

Note that last line write also merge.txt (not wmerge.txt!). You can use w"merge.txt" to avoid confusion with the file name, and -n for silent output.

Of course, you can also shorten the file list with wildcards. For instance, in case of numbered files as in the above examples, you can specify the range with braces in this way:

sed -n w"merge.txt" {1..3}.txt