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

Here is a really simple way. You said you want to cat, which implies you want to view the entire file. But you also need the filename printed.

Try this

head -n99999999 * or head -n99999999 file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

Hope that helps

Answer 2

• AIX 7.1 ksh

... glomming onto those who've already mentioned head works for some of us:

$ r head
head file*.txt
==> file1.txt <==
xxx
111

==> file2.txt <==
yyy
222
nyuk nyuk nyuk

==> file3.txt <==
zzz
$

My need is to read the first line; as noted, if you want more than 10 lines, you'll have to add options (head -9999, etc).

Sorry for posting a derivative comment; I don't have sufficient street cred to comment/add to someone's comment.

Answer 3

This method will print filename and then file contents:

tail -f file1.txt file2.txt

Output:

==> file1.txt <==
contents of file1.txt ...
contents of file1.txt ...

==> file2.txt <==
contents of file2.txt ...
contents of file2.txt ...

Answer 4

Was looking for the same thing, and found this to suggest:

tail -n +1 file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

Output:

==> file1.txt <==
<contents of file1.txt>

==> file2.txt <==
<contents of file2.txt>

==> file3.txt <==
<contents of file3.txt>

If there is only a single file then the header will not be printed. If using GNU utils, you can use -v to always print a header.

Answer 5

This should do the trick as well:

find . -type f -print -exec cat {} \;

Means:

find    = linux `find` command finds filenames, see `man find` for more info
.       = in current directory
-type f = only files, not directories
-print  = show found file
-exec   = additionally execute another linux command
cat     = linux `cat` command, see `man cat`, displays file contents
{}      = placeholder for the currently found filename
\;      = tell `find` command that it ends now here

You further can combine searches trough boolean operators like -and or -or. find -ls is nice, too.

Answer 6

And the missing awk solution is:

$ awk '(FNR==1){print ">> " FILENAME " <<"}1' *