joining multiple files

[nsmaan]

pardon me for asking this simple question, but how do we join multiple files?
I have files like file1.dat, file2.dat, file3.dat........file1000.dat and i want to join all these files into one file. How do i do it?
please help
thank you

[jozyba]

If your files had been named in alphabetical order (file0001.dat, file0002.dat, file0003.dat....file1000.dat) you could just use:

cat file*.dat >all_files.dat

But, as your files are currently named, that will join them together in the wrong order.

The solution is to do this:

for x in {1..1000}; do cat file${x}.dat >>all_files.dat; done

[jrchan]

Hi Jozyba,

Thanks for your answer, I used it to join serveral AVI files.