Merge multiple files into a single row file with a delimeter

Question

UPDATED QS: I have been working on a bash script that will merge multiple text files with numerical values into one a single row text file using delimiter for each file values while merging

Example:

File1.txt has the followling contents:
168321099
File2.txt has:
151304
151555
File3.txt has:
16980925
File4.txt has:
154292
149092

Now i want a output.txt file like below:
, 168321099 151304 151555 16980925 , 154292 149092

Basically each file delimited by space and in a single row. with comma as first and 6 field of the outputrow

tried:

cat * > out.txt but its not coming as expected

Execute a Vim macro. The sequence would be (without apostrophes): "ggVGJZZ" which means: gg - go to beginning of the file, V- select entire lines, G - go to end of file, J - concatenate lines, ZZ - save and quit. Or - easier - execute search replace with sed : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1251999/how-can-i-replace-a-newline-n-using-sed — Krzysztof Kaszkowiak, May 14 '18 at 22:11
Possible duplicate of [How can I replace a newline (\n) using sed?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1251999/how-can-i-replace-a-newline-n-using-sed) — Krzysztof Kaszkowiak, May 14 '18 at 22:13

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 15 '18 at 12:27

I am not very sure If I understood your question correctly, but I interpreted it as following :

The set of files file1,...,filen contain a set of words which you want to have printed in one single line.
Each word is space separated
In addition to the string of words, you want the first character to be a , and between word 4 and 5 you want to have a ,.

The cat+tr+awk solution:

$ cat <file1> ... <filen> | tr '\n' ' ' | awk '{$1=", "$1; $4=$4" ,"; print}'

The awk solution:

$ awk 'NR==1||NR==4{printf s",";s=" "}{printf " "$1}' <file1> ... <filen>

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 14 '18 at 22:18

0

If tr is available on your system you can do the following cat * | tr "\n" " " > out.txt

tr "\n" " " translates all line breaks to spaces

answered May 14 '18 at 22:18

Littlefinix

74
2

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 14 '18 at 23:17

If the number of lines per file is constant, then the easiest way is tr as @Littlefinix suggested, with a couple of anonymous files to supply the commas, and an echo at the end to add an explicit newline to the output line:

cat <(echo ",") File1.txt File2.txt File3.txt <(echo ",") File4.txt | tr "\n" " " > out.txt; echo >> out.txt

out.txt is exactly what you specified:

, 168321099 151304 151555 16980925 , 154292 149092

If the number of lines per input file might vary (e.g., File2.txt has 3 or 4 lines, etc.), then placing the commas always in the 1st and 6th field will be more involved, and you'd probably need a script and not a one-liner.

RavinderSingh13 · Answer 4 · 2018-05-15T06:00:43.793

Following single awk could help you on same.

awk 'FNR==1{count++;} {printf("%s%s",count==1||(count==(ARGC-1)&&FNR==1)?", ":" ",$0)} END{print ""}' *.txt

Adding a non-one liner form of solution too now.

awk '
FNR==1        {   count++                                                         }
              {   printf("%s%s",count==1||(count==(ARGC-1)&&FNR==1)?", ":" ",$0)  }
END           {   print ""                                                        }
' *.txt

Merge multiple files into a single row file with a delimeter

4 Answers4