MATLAB: Combining text files

Question

I want to combine 'n' text files.

% Content of files  ('its is just dummy code')
file1.txt
19.09.2015 1 2 3 4

file2.txt
 20.09.20155 2 3 7

file3.txt
 21.09.2015 6 9 3 8

file4.txt %empty file

[FileNames,PathName] = uigetfile('*.txt','Select the txt file', 'MultiSelect', 'on');

Ofilestr='combinefile.txt'; % open an empty file to merge all
fileID = fopen(Ofilestr,'w');
fclose(fileID);
nbfiles =length(FileNames);
for it=1:nbfiles 
    file=FileNames{1,it};
% system('copy file+Ofilestr  Ofilestr') %% %% not working
     system(['copy' file+Ofilestr  'Ofilestr']) %% %% not working
end

Any idea. Also another solution for this problem.

Answer 1

how about this then?

A = [];
for ii = 1:length(files)

    % load new contents
    newA = load(files(ii).name, '-ascii');

    % concatenate horizontally
    A = [A newA];  %#ok

end

% save final output
save('outputFile.txt', 'A')

Anyways there seem to be many answeres to this question already

Here some other atempts to take in account:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/10916-combine-multiple-text-files-into-one-text-file

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/144284-simultaneously-merging-and-editing-multiple-text-files

Answer 2

Curiously I couldn't find a good duplicate for this on StackOverflow.

I presume by your use of copy that you are looking for a solution for Windows. Coming from a Unix background, I would have used system(['cat ' FileNames{n} ' >> ' Ofilestr]);. type on Windows is supposed to be a near replacement for cat so the following should accomplish your goal.

[FileNames, PathName] = uigetfile('*.txt', 'Select the txt file', 'MultiSelect', 'on');

Ofilestr = 'combinefile.txt';
fileID = fopen(Ofilestr,'w');
fclose(fileID);

for n = 1:numel(FileNames)
     system(['type ' FileNames{n} ' >> ' Ofilestr]);
end

For a Unix solution, simply change type to cat.

---

If you want a portable version purely in MATLAB then this is what I would go with

[FileNames, PathName] = uigetfile('*.txt', 'Select the txt file', 'MultiSelect', 'on');

Ofilestr = 'combinefile.txt';
fileID = fopen(Ofilestr,'w');

for n = 1:numel(FileNames)
    fwrite(fileID, fileread(FileNames{n}));
end
fclose(fileID);

---

Both solutions above result in the output file containing

19.09.2015 1 2 3 4
20.09.20155 2 3 7
21.09.2015 6 9 3 8

---

Note: I would not recommend using

Ofilestr = 'combinefile.txt';
fileID = fopen(Ofilestr,'w');
fclose(fileID);

to empty the contents of the file. I would instead adapt the above code to

[FileNames, PathName] = uigetfile('*.txt', 'Select the txt file', 'MultiSelect', 'on');

Ofilestr = 'combinefile.txt';

if (numel(FileNames) > 1 || FileNames ~= 0)
    system(['type ' FileNames{1} ' > ' Ofilestr]);
    for n = 2:numel(FileNames)
         system(['type ' FileNames{n} ' >> ' Ofilestr]);
    end
end