UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I need to write a shell script which combines/joins 3 text files into one file. Do i put the txt files in the same folder as my script? Here is what i have:

#!/bin/bash
file1=$1
file2=$2
file3=$3
out="output.txt"
count=0
if [ $# -ne 3 ]
then
echo "$(basename $0) file1 file2 file3"
exit 1
fi
if [ ! -f $file1 ]
then
echo "$file1 not a file!"
exit 2
fi
if [ ! -f $file2 ]
then
echo "$file2 not a file!"
exit 3
fi
if [ ! -f $file ]
then
echo "$file3 not a file!"
exit 4
fi

cat $file1 $file2 $file3 >> $out
count=$(cat $out | wc -w)
echo "$count words written to $out"

You don't have to put them in the same directory. Just make sure you give the full path to the files when executing your script. For example, you can enter:

Yourscript.sh /tmp/filie1 /usr/var/spool/file2 /home/junk/file3

so i have to say within my script, the path or location of file1,file2,and file3?

Hi,

If you are using linux, then you can use the 'paste' command... the syntax will be something like:

paste -s -d '\n' <file1> <file2> <file3> > ./pasted

Regards
Ahmerin