[ACCEPTED]-How to interleave lines from two text files-command
paste -d '\n' file1 file2
0
Here's a solution using awk:
awk '{print; if(getline < "file2") print}' file1
produces this output:
line 1 from file1
line 1 from file2
line 2 from file1
line 2 from file2
...etc
Using 9 awk can be useful if you want to add some 8 extra formatting to the output, for example 7 if you want to label each line based on 6 which file it comes from:
awk '{print "1: "$0; if(getline < "file2") print "2: "$0}' file1
produces this output:
1: line 1 from file1
2: line 1 from file2
1: line 2 from file1
2: line 2 from file2
...etc
Note: this 5 code assumes that file1 is of greater than 4 or equal length to file2.
If file1 contains 3 more lines than file2 and you want to output 2 blank lines for file2 after it finishes, add 1 an else clause to the getline test:
awk '{print; if(getline < "file2") print; else print ""}' file1
or
awk '{print "1: "$0; if(getline < "file2") print "2: "$0; else print"2: "}' file1
@Sujoy's answer points in a useful direction. You can 8 add line numbers, sort, and strip the line 7 numbers:
(cat -n file1 ; cat -n file2 ) | sort -n | cut -f2-
Note (of interest to me) this needs 6 a little more work to get the ordering right 5 if instead of static files you use the output 4 of commands that may run slower or faster 3 than one another. In that case you need 2 to add/sort/remove another tag in addition 1 to the line numbers:
(cat -n <(command1...) | sed 's/^/1\t/' ; cat -n <(command2...) | sed 's/^/2\t/' ; cat -n <(command3) | sed 's/^/3\t/' ) \
| sort -n | cut -f2- | sort -n | cut -f2-
With GNU sed:
sed 'R file2' file1
Output:
line1.1 line2.1 line1.2 line2.2 line1.3 line2.3
0
Here's a GUI way to do it: Paste them into 3 two columns in a spreadsheet, copy all cells 2 out, then use regular expressions to replace 1 tabs with newlines.
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