Need to combine lots of files in a directory

Question

I've got 50 to 60 files in a directory that I need to concatenate into a single file on a regular basis.

I thought about using notepad++ thinking there was probably a plug-in that would help but haven't been able to find one.

Any other thoughts?

Answer 1

 Use the Windows 'copy' command.


    C:\Users\dan>help copy
        Copies one or more files to another location.

        COPY [/D] [/V] [/N] [/Y | /-Y] [/Z] [/L] [/A | /B ] source [/A | /B]
             [+ source [/A | /B] [+ ...]] [destination [/A | /B]]

          source       Specifies the file or files to be copied.
          /A           Indicates an ASCII text file.
          /B           Indicates a binary file.
          /D           Allow the destination file to be created decrypted
          destination  Specifies the directory and/or filename for the new file(s).
          /V           Verifies that new files are written correctly.
          /N           Uses short filename, if available, when copying a file with a
                       non-8dot3 name.
          /Y           Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
                       existing destination file.
          /-Y          Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
                       existing destination file.
          /Z           Copies networked files in restartable mode.
          /L           If the source is a symbolic link, copy the link to the target
                       instead of the actual file the source link points to.

        The switch /Y may be preset in the COPYCMD environment variable.
        This may be overridden with /-Y on the command line.  Default is
        to prompt on overwrites unless COPY command is being executed from
        within a batch script.

        **To append files, specify a single file for destination, but multiple files
        for source (using wildcards or file1+file2+file3 format).**

    So in your case:

copy *.txt destination.txt

Will concatenate all *.txt files in alphabetical order into destination.txt

Thanks for asking, I learned something new!

Answer 2

Assuming these are text files (since you are using notepad++) and that you are on Windows, you could fashion a simple batch script to concatenate them together.

For example, in the directory with all the text files, execute the following:

for %f in (*.txt) do type "%f" >> combined.txt

This will merge all files matching *.txt into one file called combined.txt.

For more information:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/keyboard-ninja/keyboard-ninja-concatenate-multiple-text-files-in-windows/

Answer 3

you could use powershell script like this

$sb = new-object System.Text.StringBuilder

foreach ($file in Get-ChildItem -path 'C:\temp\xx\') {
    $content = Get-Content -Path $file.fullname
    $sb.Append($content)
}
Out-File -FilePath 'C:\temp\xx\c.txt' -InputObject $sb.toString()