Concatenate multiple files but include filename as section headers

Question

I would like to concatenate a number of text files into one large file in terminal. I know I can do this using the cat command. However, I would like the filename of each fi

Answer 1

If the files all have the same name or can be matched by find, you can do (e.g.):

find . -name create.sh | xargs tail -n +1

to find, show the path of and cat each file.

Answer 2

This should do the trick:

for filename in file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt; do
    echo "$filename"
    cat "$filename"
done > output.txt

or to do this for all text files recursively:

find . -type f -name '*.txt' -print | while read filename; do
    echo "$filename"
    cat "$filename"
done > output.txt

Answer 3

If you like colors, try this:

for i in *; do echo; echo $'\e[33;1m'$i$'\e[0m'; cat $i; done | less -R

or:

tail -n +1 * | grep -e $ -e '==.*'

or: (with package 'multitail' installed)

multitail *

Answer 4

For solving this tasks I usually use the following command:

$ cat file{1..3}.txt >> result.txt

It's a very convenient way to concatenate files if the number of files is quite large.

Answer 5

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I % sh -c 'echo %; cat %'

This will print the full filename (including path), then the contents of the file. It is also very flexible, as you can use -name "expr" for the find command, and run as many commands as you like on the files.

Answer 6

I used grep for something similar:

grep "" *.txt

It does not give you a 'header', but prefixes every line with the filename.