How do I join two files on a newline?

Question

When I run cat 1.txt 2.txt > result.txt, I want result.txt to have a linebreak between the end of the contents of 1.txt and the beginning of the contents of 2.txt. How do I do this?

possible duplicate of [Concatenating Files And Insert New Line In Between Files](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8183191/concatenating-files-and-insert-new-line-in-between-files) — gsp8181, May 12 '15 at 14:08
possible duplicate of [How do I include a blank line between files I'm concatenating with "cat"?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1653063/how-do-i-include-a-blank-line-between-files-im-concatenating-with-cat) — fedorqui, May 12 '15 at 14:11

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 12 '15 at 14:22

One of many options is:

echo | cat 1.txt - 2.txt > result.txt

The - argument says 'accept standard input' and the echo provides the new line

This option only works cleanly for 2 files. If you are actually looking at many files etc then for example:

(cat 1.txt; echo; cat 2.txt; echo; cat 3.txt) > result.txt

Would work; It's worth noting this spawns more cat processes.

How do I join two files on a newline?

1 Answers1