Ever wondered how to concatenate text files containing columns next to each other ?
One little bash trick which can help you do this the easy way:
Assume you have for example three files containing something like this:
file1.txt
a b c
a b c
a b c
a b c
file2.txt
1 2 3
1 2 3
1 2 3
1 2 3
file3.txt
m n p
m n p
m n p
m n p
What we want to achieve is the following result:
a b c 1 2 3 m n p
a b c 1 2 3 m n p
a b c 1 2 3 m n p
a b c 1 2 3 m n p
You have two options
Option 1: Try to do it in bash and die in pain. This is usually not funny.
Option 2: The easy way, use the command "paste":
[user@host ~]$ paste file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
a b c 1 2 3 m n p
a b c 1 2 3 m n p
a b c 1 2 3 m n p
a b c 1 2 3 m n p
The command paste will concatenate the files for you
The program have some cool options, like you can set separator, or use the -s option which will cause the following behavior "paste one file at a time instead of in parallel"
Here is an example with the same files:
[user@host ~]$ paste -s file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
a b c a b c a b c a b c
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
m n p m n p m n p m n p
Each row, becomes a new column.
Have fun :)
