Question

After looking at this post, it looks like I can just use cat to merge files.

However, I am a bit confused on how to do this with my array of filename prefixes.
For example:

prefixes=( pre1 pre2 pre3 pre4 pre5 )

If I have an array of prefixes like that, how can I make a command to look like this or do something similar to this:

cat pre1.file pre2.file pre3.file pre4.file pre5.file > merged.file

Answer 1

You can use a loop to iterate over the file names in the array:

prefixes=( pre1 pre2 pre3 pre4 pre5 )
for p in "${prefixes[@]}"; do cat "$p.file"; done > merged.file