Concatenating .txt files using bash

Question

I want to make a report which is the concatenation of several .txt files. I wrote this bash code (~/scripts/report.sh)

echo "Display content of files in /etc/ directory"
for file in $(find ~/Research/reports/August/ -name '*.txt' -type f) ;
do
    echo "############START OF FILE#########"
    echo ${file}
    echo " "
    cat ${file}
    echo "##########END OF FILE########"
    echo " "
done

but I get the error:

'home/vdonchev/scripts/report.sh: line 2: syntax error near unexpected token `
'home/vdonchev/scripts/report.sh: line 2: `for file in $(find ~/Research/reports/August/ -name '*.txt' -type f) ;

I don't understand what is wrong: when I call only

find ~/Research/reports/August/ -name '*.txt' -type f

it works and indeed lists my .txt files.

Thanks in advance.

I actually took the code from here: http://www.unix.com/shell-programming-and-scripting/204319-recursively-cat-files-directory-filename-printed-first.html — Veliko, Aug 31 '17 at 12:29
I tried running the code on Ubuntu 14 in Bash shell, changed `~/Research/reports/August/` to `/home/campovski/` and it worked... — campovski, Aug 31 '17 at 12:31
I tried running the code on macOS, changed the directory to `~/Desktop` and it worked. From the log, it seems that there is a `\`` in your script but there is seems none in the script you posted — Papershine, Aug 31 '17 at 12:40
Skip the loop and use `find ~/Research/reports/August/ -name '*.txt' -type f -printf '############START OF FILE#########\n%p\n\n' -exec cat {} \; -printf '##########END OF FILE########\n'` — Tom Fenech, Aug 31 '17 at 12:44

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 31 '17 at 12:41

1

I resolved the issue. It seems that because I am opening my script through Windows some encoding gets disturbed.

After executing

dos2unix ~/scripts/report.sh

it worked like a charm :)

I hope I explained correctly.

answered Aug 31 '17 at 12:41

Veliko

747
1
9
25

Then you shouldn't tag `linux` – Papershine Aug 31 '17 at 12:42
1

I work under Linux, but I have also Windows with a mapped network drive to the linux. – Veliko Aug 31 '17 at 12:43

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 31 '17 at 12:34

0

Did you try

for filename in ~/Research/reports/August/*.txt; do

answered Aug 31 '17 at 12:34

Frankx Ix

15
3

That is different because it only goes through `.txt` files directly in `~/Research/reports/August/`, not in subdirectories... – campovski Aug 31 '17 at 12:37

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 31 '17 at 12:41

For me,

#/bin/sh

for file in $(find /path/to/repertory -name "*.txt" -type f)
do
   echo "############START OF FILE#########"
   cat $file
   echo "##########END OF FILE########"
done

did the trick. Then you should just launch like this :

 ./script.sh > concat.txt

Concatenating .txt files using bash

3 Answers3