Shell Programming and Scripting

I am new to Linux and I am trying to cat only N files in a folder. N is dynamically given number at runtime.
If I give N as 2 then cat only 2 files in the folder
and If I give N as 5 then cat only 5 files in the folder.

Is there any way to do that?

Assume 1000 files AND this is NOT homework.
The first 5 files of what?

Latest date, earliest date, file length, file extension, any 5 from any random files, file size, first 5, last five, 5 consecutive files somewhere inside those 1000 files, 5 with an RE somewhere inside the filename and so on...

Please be more specific...

Also show us any attempts you have tried, OS and shell you wish to use...

This is not a homework. I am trying to do couple of experiments using cat command. So wanted to try this one

The files are sorted in the order of name . For Example to display the results of first N consecutive files. I am not yet started with any programming as I don't know how to start it.

There are thousands of ways to do this (if I'm guessing correctly that you want to cat the 1st five unhidden files in the current working directory sorted alphanumerically and that you are using a POSIX conforming shell and that none of the filenames in your directory contain any <newline> or IFS characters). One trivial way to do that if my assumptions are correct would be:

Code:

cat $(ls | head -n 5)

If any of my assumptions are incorrect, you would need to actually tell us what programming environment you're using and accurately describe what you are really trying to do.

I am mostly into hadoop and started learning the basic linux and shell scripting.
Right now I am using RedHat OS.

I have written a program to cat data so that I can go to each sub folder and generate the concatenation of data as output text file for each folder.

Right now I am trying to go to each sub folder and generate output text file for N consecutive files. N is dynamically given number for each sub folder to work it out.

We would be happy to try to help you if you would be willing to tell us exactly what it is that you're try8ing to do. You have made three posts in this thread and what you want has changed in each post.

What code have you written?

What is it failing to do that you want to do?

How are these dynamic values supposed to be determined?

In what directory are these subfolders (i.e., directories) to be found?

Are all of the directories in the parent directory to be processed, is there a list of specific directories to be processed, do the directories to be processed have a certain naming convention that separates them from other directories in the parent directory? In other words; how do you identify what directories are to be processed and how many dynamic files are to be concatenated from each one?

There are many ways, but none of this is related to the cat command. Also, it depends on which shell you are using. Here is for instance how to cat the first N non-dot files in alphabetic order when running zsh:

Code:

cat *([1,$N])

(Maybe a similar solution also exists with bash).