How to build one file contains other files, selected by mask?

Question

I need to put the contents of all *.as files in some specified folder into one big file.

How can I do it in Linux shell?

Answer 1

You mean cat *.as > onebigfile?

Answer 2

Not sure what you mean by compile but are you looking for tar?

Answer 3

If you need all files in all subdirectories, th most robust way to do this is:

rm onebigfile
find -name '*.as' -print0 | xargs -0 cat >> onebigfile

This:

• deletes onebigfile
• for each file found, appends it onto onebigfile (this is why we delete it in the previous step -- otherwise you could end up tacking onto some existing file.)

A less robust but simpler solution:

cat `find -name '*.as'` > onebigfile

(The latter version doesn't handle very large numbers of files or files with weird filenames so well.)