Hi, I have the following problem. I have files with one column of data (let's say file1.dat, file2.dat...file6.dat), and I would like to record the first value of the column of each file into another file (let's name it fileall.dat), which would have the the six values, one in each column. I use to do it as follows,

head --lines=1 file_i.dat >> record_i.dat

with i={1,...,6}, and then, I pasted all with

paste -d" " record_1.dat record_2.dat ... record_6.dat > fileall.dat

and then I had the 6 first values of each data file column together in one file. Is there any way to do it all in one step?