Sponsored Content
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers grep multiple text files in folder into 1 text file? Post 26775 by Perderabo on Friday 23rd of August 2002 08:06:16 AM
Old 08-23-2002
Quote:
Originally posted by oombera
Wow - I tried
(ls * | xargs cat) > all

It works the same and it's cool that it's so small.. but I keep getting the error:

cat: input/output files 'all' identical

The large file is created like it should be, but is there something additional to get rid of / suppress this error?
Ouch! First, that line has the same problem that your original solution did, we are asking the shell to replace * with a list of all files in the current directory. And that won't fly with 5,300 files. What I meant to type is:

(ls | xargs cat) > all

I also didn't think about the output file popping into existence before the ls ran. The best solution for that is something like:

(ls | xargs cat) > /some/dir/all

cat is smart enough to catch this, but grep isn't. And I'm still thinking that the op wanted to use grep to extract certain lines.
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Shell Programming and Scripting

Find all text files in folder and then copy to a new folder

Hi all, *I use Uwin and Cygwin emulator. I´m trying to search for all text files in the current folder (C/Files) and its sub folders using find -depth -name "*.txt" The above command worked for me, but now I would like to copy all found text files to a new folder (C/Files/Text) with ... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: cgkmal
4 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

[bash help]Adding multiple lines of text into a specific spot into a text file

I am attempting to insert multiple lines of text into a specific place in a text file based on the lines above or below it. For example, Here is a portion of a zone file. IN NS ns1.domain.tld. IN NS ns2.domain.tld. IN ... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: cdn_humbucker
2 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Loop through text file > Copy Folder > Edit XML files in bulk?

I have a text file which contains lines in this format - it contains 105 lines in total, but I'm just putting 4 here to keep it short: 58571,east_ppl_ppla_por 58788,east_pcy_hd_por 58704,east_pcy_ga_por 58697,east_pcy_pcybs_por It's called id_key.txt I have a sample folder called... (9 Replies)
Discussion started by: biscuitcreek
9 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

Need to build Shell Script to search content of a text file into a folder consist several files

Have to read one file say sourcefile containing several words and having another folder containing several files. Now read the first word of Sourcefile & search it into the folder consisting sevral files, and create another file with result. We hhave to pick the filename of the file in which... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: mukesh.baranwal
3 Replies

5. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How to grep multiple lines from a text file using another text file?

I would like to use grep to select multiple lines from a text file using a single-column text file. Basically I want to only select lines from the first text file where the second column of the first text file matches the second text file. How do I go about doing that? Thanks! (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: evelibertine
5 Replies

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Changing text in multiple files, but with different text for each file

Hello, I have a situation where I want to change a line of text in multiple files, but the problem is that I want to change the text to something unique for each file. For example, let's say I have five files named bob.txt, joe.txt, john.txt, tom.txt, and zach.txt. Each of these files has a... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: Scatterbrain26
5 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

Extracting lines from text files in folder based on the numbers in another file

Hello, I have a file ff.txt that looks as follows *ABNA.txt 356 24 36 112 *AC24.txt 457 458 321 2 ABNA.txt and AC24.txt are the files in the folder named foo1. Based on the numbers in the ff.txt file, I want to extract the lines from the corresponding files in the foo1 folder and... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: mohamad
2 Replies

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

Merge the multiple text files into one file

Hi All, I am trying to merge all the text files into one file using below snippet cat /home/Temp/Test/Log/*.txt >> all.txt But it seems it is not working. I have multiple files like Output_ServerName1.txt, Output_ServreName2.txt I want to merge each file into one single file and... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: sharsour
6 Replies

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

Split a text file into multiple text files?

I have a text file with entries like 1186 5556 90844 7873 7722 12 7890.6 78.52 6679 3455 9867 1127 5642 ..N so many records like this. I want to split this file into multiple files like cluster1.txt, cluster2.txt, cluster3.txt, ..... clusterN.txt. (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: sammy777
4 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to add a text at the beginning of a text files in a folder?

how to add a text ( surya) at the beginning of a text files (so many) in folder text file: 111111 555555 666666 result: surya 111111 555555 666666 (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: suryanarayana
3 Replies
cat(1)							      General Commands Manual							    cat(1)

Name
       cat - concatenate and print data

Syntax
       cat [ -b ] [ -e ] [ -n ] [ -s ] [ -t ] [ -u ] [ -v ] file...

Description
       The  command reads each file in sequence and displays it on the standard output.  Therefore, to display the file on the standard output you
       type:
       cat file
       To concatenate two files and place the result on the third you type:
       cat file1 file2 > file3
       To concatenate two files and append them to a third you type:
       cat file1 file2 >> file3
       If no input file is given, or if a minus sign (-) is encountered as an argument, reads from the standard input file.  Output is buffered in
       1024-byte blocks unless the standard output is a terminal, in which case it is line buffered.  The utility supports the processing of 8-bit
       characters.

Options
       -b   Ignores blank lines and precedes each output line with its line number.

       -e   Displays a dollar sign ($) at the end of each output line.

       -n   Precedes all output lines (including blank lines) with line numbers.

       -s   Squeezes adjacent blank lines from output and single spaces output.

       -t   Displays non-printing characters (including tabs) in output.  In addition to those representations used with the -v  option,  all  tab
	    characters are displayed as ^I.

       -u   Unbuffers output.

       -v   Displays  non-printing  characters (excluding tabs and newline) as the ^x.	If the character is in the range octal 0177 to octal 0241,
	    it is displayed as M-x. The delete character (octal 0177) displays as ^?.  For example, is displayed as ^X.

See Also
       cp(1), ex(1), more(1), pr(1), tail(1)

																	    cat(1)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 12:46 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy