If you’re working in Linux and need to merge or join two files, you’re in luck. Linux provides a powerful and flexible command line tool called “join” that can do just that. This tutorial will guide you through the steps needed to join two files in Linux.
Understanding the “Join” Command
The join command in Linux is a text processing utility that combines lines from two files based on a common field. By default, it recognizes a space as the field separator and will merge lines with matching field values.
Basic Syntax
The basic syntax for the join command is as follows:
join [OPTION]… FILE1 FILE2
Joining Two Files
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to join two files in Linux:
1. Create two files
For this tutorial, we’ll first create two simple text files. Here’s how to create a file and add some lines to it using the echo command:
echo -e "1\n2\n3" > file1.txt
echo -e "1\n2\n3" > file2.txt
2. Join the files
Now, we can join these two files. The basic command to join two files is:
join file1.txt file2.txt
This will merge the lines from both files that have matching field values. The output will be:
1 1
2 2
3 3
Conclusion
The join command in Linux is a powerful tool for merging files based on a common field. It’s just one of the many utilities provided by the Linux command line that can make handling files and data more efficient. So the next time you need to merge two files in Linux, remember the join command!