UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Dear all,
Today I spend almost all my day with something I hope any of you can help me with...
I'm trying to write a small script (!/bin/sh) to be able to make 900 copies of one file. Can anyone help me with this? I couldn't figure this out (maybe I need to create some sort of loop) and couldn't find a solution on the net either.
Thank you so much in advance,

Marjolein

If there can be a reason, how to differentiate between the files? There can only be one file called sample.txt -- so how should the copies be named?

Maybe this will get you started.

Code:

for ((i=0;i<900;i++)); do
 echo "do something $i.";
done

I have to ask, why do you want 900 copies of a file??

I want to do this in order to create a so-called 4Dimensional data set (in time) of functional MRI data.
I will merge the 900 copies of the same 2D (.img) image together in 1 new 4D image. Since all the copies are identical, the name is not important.

Create a sample file

Code:

> cat file120
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A command to do something (duplicate the file) 900 times
Beware if the file .new already exists since the >> will append to existing file. Thus, you might need to delete the .new file before executing the command.

Code:

> for ((i=0;i<900;i++)) do cat file120 >>file120.new; done

Take a look, and see the new file has 900 lines (as verification)

Code:

> wc -l file120.new
900 file120.new

Take a look at first ten rows to see that the original data was repeated

Code:

> head file120.new
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thanks!
i will try the suggestions at work tomorrow (i don't have vmware at my computer at home). i will let you know if it works!

Unfortunately.... I did not succeed.
With Joeyg's advice I copied the content of the file 900 times, but not the file itself.

Ikon's advice was a little too short for a starter like myself.

Anyone other ideas?

Thanks so much in advance!