concatenate: Concatenate a list of files

Package: system

Usage

concatenate files [output_file]

Parameters

files: The list of input files. The standard input, STDIN, may be specified to interactively enter a few lines of text rather than read from a disk file. All input files should be of the same type (binary or text).

output_file: The name of the output file. If no file is explicitly specified the standard output (STDOUT) is used.

out_type = in_type: The output file type is forced if this parameter is defined as "binary" or "text". If "out_type" does not begin with a "b" (or "B"), or a "t" ("T"), then the output type is either "text", if the output file is the standard output, or is determined from the type of the first input file.

append = no: If set to "yes", "files" are appended to "output_file".

Description

Each file in the input file list is appended to the output file. If "output_file" is not the standard output, and if output redirection (">") was not specified on the command line, the resulting stream of data is placed in a file. The input can be STDIN, which makes for an easy way to enter a few lines of text into a file (but type is usually more convenient). If entering data via the standard input, type the end of file character, e.g., <ctrl/z>, to terminate the input sequence.

Examples

1. Write out file1, followed by file2, to the terminal screen. Note that there must be no space after the comma.

cl> concatenate file1,file2

2. Write out files file1 and file2 into the new file "outfile".

cl> concatenate file1,file2 outfile

3. Copy what you type (up to the end-of-file character) into the file junk.

cl> concatenate STDIN junk

4. Write out the contents of each of the files whose names are given in "list", one per line, and append this data to "junk".

cl> concatenate @list junk append+

5. Concatenation is also possible using type, e.g., the following command will append the contents of "file" to the file "outfile", which will be created if it does not already exist.

cl> type file >> outfile

The redirect-append operator ">>" may be used to append the output of any task to a file.

Notes

All input files should be of the same type, either all "text" or all "binary".