Use Automator To Combine Text Files In Linux

• Use Automator To Combine Text Files In Linux Download
• Txtcollector
• Use Automator To Combine Text Files In Linux Mac

• Nov 13, 2018  For ease, place them in a folder in the root of the C: drive (e.g., c:textfiles) and make sure the folder only contains text files you want to merge. Tip Before merging text files, you may want to make sure there is a blank line or at least one carriage return (pressing the Enter key) to help separate each file.
• You can use Automator to alter what happens when a file is added to a folder. In this example, new files added to a folder are then sorted into subfolders according to their type. You can add multiple actions to a folder and then determine which order they are used.

Now you know how to use the grep command in Linux/Unix. The grep command is highly flexible with many useful operators and options. By combining grep commands, you can get powerful results and find the text hiding in thousands of files.

For the last several months I have copied several data folders to zip files at weekly intervals. Now I'd like to combine those zip files into one zip file, because most of the contents of the existing zip files are just different versions of the same data files.

So if a file appears in more than one of the existing zip files, I'd like the newest version to be in the new zip file being created. Of course if a file appears in only one existing zip file, then I want it in the final zip file also.

I'm trying to avoid having to unzip them one by one to a working folder, overwriting data from older zip files with data from newer zip files, and then rezipping everything into a new zip file.

From what I understand pkzip would combine the zip files themselves, but is there a dependable and fast free method anyone can tell me about?

CChrissCChriss

7 Answers

you won't like it but: unzipping everything into a working folder in the right order, then zipping the result is the most effective way.

otherwise, you will end up with a lot of wasted CPU cycles:

• assume your result goes to 'first.zip'
• every file from '2.zip', '3.zip' etc has to be unzipped and then zipped again into 'first.zip'
• in '2.zip' exists a file 'foobar.txt' and in '3.zip' exists another file 'foobar.txt'.merging it the way you want to merge it leads to 'compress it X times'
• the toc of a .zip is at the end of the file: you add more content (to the middle of the
  .zip by updating a file in the middle) and the whole file has to be rewritten

so, imho just use 'unzip' wiseley:

the order of the unzipping is important, I don't know the pattern of your zip names, but I would extract the newest zip file first, the '-u' option of unzip overwrites only files if they are newer or creates files if not already there. as a result, you will unzip only the newest files and zip the result only once.

akiraakira

Just use the -g option of ZIP, where you can append any number of ZIP files into one (without extracting the old ones). This will save you significant time.

Also have a look at zipmerge

It may not be what you're looking for, but the free Ant build tool does include the ability to merge Zipfiles.

CarlFCarlF

I was thinking you could script the files being extracted into a temp directory.

There is problem with this command line. I couldn't find a way to order the unzipping of archives, so an older archive may overwrite a newer archive. This problem may be overcome by using an unzipper the has a command line switch to only overwrite if newer. I mainly use 7-Zip which doesn't have such a command line option.

Also, this command needs on all the zip files being in the same directory. Not a problem if all the zips have unique names. That said, the command can be changed to fit your situation.

for /f %f in ('dir /b *.zip') do 'c:program files7-zip7z' x %f -oc:testdir -r -aoa

To change this to use another unzipping program just replace 'c:program files7-zip7z' x %f -oc:testdir -r -aoa with whatever command you would execute on each file. Use %f as a place holder for the name of the file you want to unzip.

I tried looking for a polished app, free or otherwise and didn't really find one.

Hopefully this will give you a good start and WinZip or something similar can take care of the overwrite problem.

Good luck.

https://linux.die.net/man/1/zipmerge:

zipmerge merges the source zip archives source-zip into the target zip archive target-zip. By default, files in the source zip archives overwrite existing files of the same name in the target zip archive.

If I remember correctly, pkzip was a command-line program.

There's still a command-line version of ZIP which claims to be compatible with pkzip.

It's called Info-ZIP and there should be a version for your OS.

paviumpavium

Look for winzip command line on the net. Winzip has several versions of command line tools to fit whatever version of winzip you may may have installed. The command line tool WZZIP has a -f 'freshen' option that will zip newer files only of those that match the name of a file in the summation output zip file.

Use WZunzip wraped in a FOR statement as shown above to unzip one file to a directory then WZzip -f to add those files to an output summation zip file. Then the FOR loop repeats to work on the next input file to output to the one and only summation output file. The order of the input files does not matter since WZzip -f will only add to the output file if the input data is newer than what is already in the output file. All files that do not exist in the output file will also be added. Then you may unzip the result to a folder and then zip it up again to obtain an efficiently packed result file. You can even do this automatically after the FOR loop at the end of the batch file.

suspectus

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged zip or ask your own question.

Many scanners let you choose between scanning one-PDF-per-page or scanning all the pages into one big PDF. The scanner I use does.

However, what happens when you have multiple PDFs that really should go in one document? How do you combine PDFs together?

There are a million ways to do this, including some I have talked about before like using Preview.app to drag and drop pages, and there are lots of applications that one can use to combine PDFs, but I wanted to do something that would be:

• Already built into the OS and not require any additional software.
• Easy to use.
• Repeatable so I only have to set it up once and can use it again and again.

We’re going to use a Mac OS X tool called Automator to set this up. If you have seen my How to Split PDFs tutorial, this is basically the reverse.

Start Automator

In Finder, go to Applications and then start Automator.

Choose Service

In the window that pops up, highlight Service and then hit Choose.

Set The Variable For The Original PDFs

At the top of the window at the right, change the Service receives selected dropdown to PDF files. I set the in dropdown to Finder.app. I haven’t tested it in other applications.

Now in the Library section on the left, click on Utilities and then find Set Value of Variable. Drag it to the main window on the right.

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In the Variable dropdown, choose New variable… and call it originalPDFs.

Here’s what the first rule looks like so far.

Set The Variable For The Path Of The PDF

We are doing this step because of a weird way Automator works. It doesn’t make it easy to save the resulting PDF to the same folder as the original.

I could prompt the user to choose a path, but I wanted to make it automatic so we have to get a bit geeky.

Note: if you’re an Automator expert and know a better way to do this, please leave a comment!

Still in the Utilities section of the Library on the left, find Run AppleScript. Drag it to the main window under our last step.

In the Run AppleScript window, paste in this code:


on run {input, parameters}
set pathList to {}
repeat with itemNum from 1 to count of input
tell application 'System Events'
copy POSIX path of (container of (item itemNum of input)) to end of pathList
end tell
end repeat
return pathList
end run


(Basically that is going through the PDFs that you are splitting and copying the folders that they are stored in.)

Now in the Utilities section of the Library, find our old friend Set Value of Variable and (you guessed it) drag it into the main window under our last step.

In the Variable dropdown, choose New Variable… and give your new variable a name of containerPath.

Here’s what these steps look like:

Combine The PDFs

Now it’s time to do the combining!

First, we want to get the list of PDFs that we had saved back in the first step.

In Library -> Utilities, drag Get Value of Variable to the main window under our last step.

In the Variable dropdown, choose originalPDFs.

Right under the Variable dropdown there is an Options button. Hit that and check Ignore this action’s input.

Now in Library on the right, choose PDFs. Find Combine PDF Pages and drag it under the last step.

Next, in Library on the right, choose Files & Folders. Find Rename Finder Items and drag it under the last step. It will pop up a message asking you if you want to preserve an extra copy. We don’t need that, so hit Don’t Add.

In the Rename Finder Items box, change the dropdown to Name Single Item. Then hit the Options button and check Show this action when the workflow runs. This will let name the new PDF.

Next, also in Files & Folders, drag Move Finder Items under the last step. In the Variable window at the bottom of your screen, find your containerPath variable. Drag it up on top of the To dropdown.

Here is what those last steps look like:

Save The Service

Alright! You’re done! Here’s the entire rule (click to see it bigger):

Go to File > Save and give your new service a name. I’ll call mine Combine PDFs.

Use The Combine PDFs Service

You have just created a Service. This means that if you right-click a group of PDFs in the Finder, you can combine them right from there. Let’s try it.

Use Automator To Combine Text Files In Linux Download

Find a group of PDFs on your Mac, highlight them, and right-click. Choose the Services menu near the bottom. If all went well, you should see Combine PDFs (or whatever you called your Service) in the list. Choose it.

It will think for a moment and then pop up a box where you can give the new PDF a name. I just called mine “Combined”.

Boom. I now have a PDF called Combined.pdf that contains all the selected PDFs.

Best of all, since I went through this trouble to set it up as a Service, going forward whenever I need to combine PDFs, I just have to right-click on them.

Downloading The Service

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of setting this all up, you are welcome to use mine.

To use it, download the file to your computer and double-click it to Unzip it.

You want to move the file to the ~/Library/Services folder. It’s probably hidden for you, so the easiest way to get there is:

• Go to a Finder window
• Choose the Go menu and then Go to Folder…
• Type or paste in ~/Library/Services

Once that window opens up, drag the CombinePDF.workflow file there.

This article was originally written in August 2010. It was updated in September 2015 for OS X Yosemite and to improve the workflow.

Txtcollector

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