Concatenate text files with Windows command line dropping leading lines

Question

I need to concatenate some relatively large text files  and would prefer to do this via the command line  Unfortunately I only have Windows  and cannot install new software   type file1 txt file2 txt  gt  out txt   allows me to almost get what I want  but I don t want the 1st line of file2 txt to be included in out txt   I have noticed that more has the  n option to specify a starting line  but I haven t managed to combine these to get the result I want  I m aware that this may not be possible in Windows  and I can always edit out txt by hand to get rid of the line  but is there a simple way of doing it from the command line

User · Answer

Use the FOR command to echo a file line by line, and with the 'skip' option to miss a number of starting lines...

FOR /F "skip=1" %i in (file2.txt) do @echo %i

You could redirect the output of a batch file, containing something like...

FOR /F %%i in (file1.txt) do @echo %%i
FOR /F "skip=1" %%i in (file2.txt) do @echo %%i

Note the double % when a FOR variable is used within a batch file.

User · Answer

Here s how to do this    type file1 txt  amp  amp  more  1 file2 txt   gt  out txt

User · Answer

I don t have enough reputation points to comment on the recommendation to use   csv  gt  gt  ConcatenatedFile csv  but I can add a warning   If you create ConcatenatedFile csv file in the same directory that you are using for concatenation it will be added to itself

User · Answer

I would put this in a comment to ghostdog74  except my rep is too low  so here goes   more  2 file2 txt  gt  temp  This code will actually ignore rows 1 and 2 of the file   OP wants to keep all rows from the first file  to maintain the header row   and then exclude the first row  presumably the same header row  on the second file  so to exclude only the header row OP should use more  1   type temp file1 txt  gt  out txt  It is unclear what order results from this code   Is temp appended to file1 txt  as desired   or is file1 txt appended to temp  undesired as the header row would be buried in the middle of the resulting file    In addition  these operations take a REALLY LONG TIME with large files  e g  300MB

User · Answer

You can also simply try this  type file2 txt  gt  gt  file1 txt   It will append the content of file2 txt at the end of file1 txt  If you need original file1 txt  take a backup beforehand  Or you can do this  type file1 txt  gt  out txt type file2 txt  gt  gt  out txt   If you want to have a line break at the end of the first file  you can try the following command before appending   type file1 txt  gt  out txt printf   n   gt  gt  out txt type file2 txt  gt  gt  out txt

User · Answer

I know you said that you couldn t install any software  but I m not sure how tight that restriction is  Anyway  I had the same issue  trying to concatenate two files with presumably the same headers  and I thought I d provide an alternative answer for others who arrive at this page  since it worked just great for me   After trying a whole bunch of commands in windows and being severely frustrated  and also trying all sorts of graphical editors that promised to be able to open large files  but then couldn t  I finally got back to my Linux roots and opened my Cygwin prompt  Two commands   cp file1 csv out csv tail -n 2 file2 csv  gt  gt  out csv   For file1 csv 800MB and file2 csv 400MB  those two commands took under 5 seconds on my machine  In a Cygwin prompt  no less  I thought Linux commands were supposed to be slow in Cygwin but that approach took far less effort and was way easier than any windows approach I could find

User · Answer

This takes Test txt with headers and appends Test1 txt and Test2 txt and writes results to Testresult txt file after stripping headers from second and third files respectively   type C  Test txt  gt  C  Testresult txt  amp  amp  more  1 C  Test1 txt  gt  gt  C  Testresult txt  amp  amp  more  1 C  Test2 txt  gt  gt  C  Testresult txt

User · Answer

In powershell   Get-Content file1 txt   Out-File out txt Get-Content file2 txt   Select-Object -Skip 1   Out-File -Append out txt

User · Answer

The help for copy explains that wildcards can be used to concatenate multiple files into one   For example  to copy all  txt files in the current folder that start with  abc  into a single file named xyz txt   copy abc  txt xyz txt

User · Answer

more  2 file2 txt  gt  temp type temp file1 txt  gt  out txt   or you can use copy  See copy    for more   copy  b temp file1 txt  out txt

User · Answer

I use this  and it works well for me   TYPE   Server Share Folder   csv  gt  gt  C  Folder ConcatenatedFile csv  Of course  before every run  you have to DELETE C  Folder ConcatenatedFile csv  The only issue is that if all files have headers  then it will be repeated in all files

User · Answer

more  2 file1 txt  gt  type  gt  out txt  amp  amp  type file2 txt  gt  out txt

[windows] Concatenate text files with Windows command line, dropping leading lines

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