The Ultimate Guide to Merging Files in Linux to Make Your File Management More Efficient

In daily work, we often need to merge multiple files into one file for easy management and processing. In Linux systems, merging files is a very common operation and can be accomplished using a variety of commands. However, for some novices, they may not know how to choose the appropriate command, or how to use the command to merge files. In this article, we will provide you with the ultimate guide to merging files in Linux to make your file management more efficient.

We introduced the use of cat command in previous articles and learned that this command is used to obtain the contents of files and output them to the screen or other devices. In fact, the original purpose of the cat command is to concatenate files, so we can use it to merge files.

We introduced the use of cat command in previous articles and learned that this command is used to obtain the contents of files and output them to the screen or other devices. In fact, the original purpose of the cat command is to concatenate files, so we can use it to merge files.

The method of using the cat command to merge files is very simple. Just follow the command with the name of the file to be merged (including the path), as shown below:

cat   ...

Let’s give an example, if we have two files named file1.txt and file2.txt, we first use the cat command to view the contents, and then merge the two files, as shown in the following figure:

But the above example only merges the contents of the two files and outputs them to the terminal. It does not save the merged contents anywhere, and the two files file1.txt and file2.txt are not saved. No changes were made. If we want to save the merged content somewhere, we need to redirect it to another file, as shown below:

cat file1.txt file2.txt > file3.txt

The file3.txt in the above command can be an existing file or a file that does not exist. If it does not exist, it will be created. Another one, the redirection symbol > in the above command will overwrite the contents of the file, so we recommend not to use an existing file to avoid being overwritten.

Use the cat command to append the merged content to the existing file

Every merge requires re-creating a file, which is not convenient for certain needs. So, is there a way to append the merged content to an existing file? The answer is yes. The method is to change the redirection symbol > to >>, as shown below:

cat file1.txt file2.txt >> file3.txt

The above file1.txt, file2.txt and file3.txt are the files used in the previous example. In order to distinguish them, we add some characters to file1.txt and file2.txt, and then execute the above command, Let’s take a look at file3.txt again, as shown below:

As you can see, the content in file3.txt is appended to the previous content.

Use a loop to merge multiple files

If there are too many files to be merged, such as 100, do you need to add 100 file names after the cat command? This is definitely unrealistic. We have a ready-made method, which is to use a for loop to merge files.

For example, we want to have file1.txt, file2.txt. . . file5.txt 5 files need to be merged, you can use the following command:

for i in {1..5}; do cat "file$i.txt" >> newfile.txt; done

With the above command, we merged the contents of 5 files into the new file newfile.txt.

Other ways to merge files

In addition to using cat, you can also use the sed command to merge files. sed is a non-interactive file editing method that can save file changes for a specific period of time. Using the h option, changes can be temporarily placed in the buffer. Look at the following example:

sed h file1.txt file2.txt > file3.txt

Through the introduction of this article, I believe you have mastered a variety of commands to merge files, and know how to choose the appropriate command according to actual needs. Merging files is a very common operation. Mastering these commands can make your file management more efficient and improve your work efficiency. When you need to merge multiple files, don't forget to refer to the commands introduced in this article and choose the method that best suits you.

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