Combine Text Files Terminal: How to merge files together on the command line

In this tutorial you'll learn how to combine text files using a bash (or bash-like) terminal.

It's quite a common task to combine text files or even other types of files on the command line. Perhaps you need to merge log files, scripts or code files that have been split.

It's super simple to do on any bash-like command line using what are known as the redirect operators. You can use these operators to redirect output of a specific command to either another command or in our case, a file.

You can even combine text files within scripts that you are writing on your system. For example, perhaps you want to automate a back or file transfer but as part of that process want to merge together certain files before archival / transfer.

In the tutorial you will use the cat command to inspect the contents of a file. Once you understand how this command works you can use it as mentioned above with one of the redirect operators to combine text files.

You will also learn that simply redirecting output of one of these cat commands to a file will result on the data in that file being overwritten. Not to worry though, you can also use the append operator to ensure that data doesn't get overwritten which you will also learn about in this tutorial.

Once you have seen how to merge files together with the command line you will see how simple commands can be used together to create a chain or a flow of data that can be sent to any locations that you need. Channel Handle @codebubb

[chmchn]

Thank you. Is there a way to do this and not have the headings duplicate?

[Chen-glhm]

I have two files having three column each. I want merge so that I have 6 column in new file
Will it work?
Or it will write in three column only and join the data.