Shell script to append text to each file?

Question

I have a folder full of text files. I need to append the same block of text to each of them (and of course overwrite the original file).

I was wondering what the correct Bash shell syntax would be for this. Would I use cat?

I have done a few batch scripts but I'm not a Bash expert. Any suggestions appreciated.

Overwrite or append, both are exclusive? – flolo Apr 08 '11 at 06:41 — flolo, Apr 08 '11 at 06:41

score 36 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 07 '11 at 19:18

36

Use append redirection.

for f in *.txt
do
  cat footer >> "$f"
done

answered Apr 07 '11 at 19:18

The OP states "and of course overwrite the original files", so I suspect '>' is desired instead of '>>' – William Pursell Apr 08 '11 at 00:14
3

@wiliam, no, this answer appends the footer text to each file. you don't want to wipe out each file's actual data. – glenn jackman Apr 08 '11 at 10:44
1

Where `footer` is a file containing the block of text that must be appended to each file. – Andrea Spadaccini Apr 08 '11 at 15:47
Yes, what Ignacio said. I want to append the new text file snippet to each of the original files and then save them once appended. Thanks. – Steve Apr 08 '11 at 20:15

score 7 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 08 '11 at 15:48

7

If you're needing to do this via a script, you can use echo and append redirection to get the extra text into the files.

FILES=pathto/*
for f in $FILES ; do
    echo "#extra text" >> $f
done

edited Apr 08 '11 at 15:48

YOU

answered Apr 07 '11 at 19:24

GreenMatt

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 08 '11 at 08:29

1

sed -i.bak "$ a $(<file_block_of_text)" *.txt

answered Apr 08 '11 at 08:29

kurumi

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

0

Variant of kurumi's answer:

sed -i.bak "\$aTEXTTOINSERT" *.txt

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

answered Apr 16 '13 at 19:18

Joe Corneli

Prabhu · Answer 5 · 2020-09-25T09:25:46.147

-1

very simply one which worked well for me

#!/bin/sh
FILES="./files/*"

for f in $FILES
do
    echo '0000000' | cat - $f > temp && mv temp $f
done

edited Sep 25 '20 at 09:25

answered Sep 25 '20 at 09:18

Prabhu

in bash you have >> pipe operator, you should use it – Tymur Valiiev Sep 25 '20 at 09:21

5 Answers5