HPR4687: UNIX Curio #11 - Merging Files
About this episode
This episode explores the use of the paste utility in UNIX-like operating systems for merging files.
This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. ether This series is dedicated to exploring little-known—and occasionally useful—trinkets lurking in the dusty corners of UNIX-like operating systems. I frequently find myself reaching for the cut utility when writing scripts to extract one piece of data from a line, or to select specific fields from a log file. While I am familiar with its counterpart, paste , I don't employ it very often because I don't typically need its functionality. This perhaps has to do with the fact that I rarely work with text files containing lists. For shorter lists, I usually end up using a spreadsheet and for larger ones, a relational database. Both are valuable tools with their own strengths and weaknesses, but it is good to also know about standard utilities for working with lists. After uploading UNIX Curio #8 ( HPR episode 4657 ), I felt like maybe I had been too dismissive of the comm utility in that episode and should talk more about tools that are useful when managing lists. I don't frequently find myself using paste 1 , but can explain how it works. Briefly, it is a rough opposite of cut —when given multiple files as arguments, it assembles…
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