Question

I have 3 files.

cat file1 
A
B
C

cat file2
2
3
4

cat file3
a
b
c

I need to merge them into file like this.

Output:

  file1  file2  file3
  A      2      a 
  B      3      b
  C      4      c

How can i do in shell script.

Regards

Answer 1

paste is your friend

{ echo "file1\tfile2\tfile3" 
   paste file1 file2 file3 ; } > newOutFile

The \t are tab-chars, if you want a different field separator, just change that.
(If you want nicely spaced columns as the same width as the widest value in a file, then you’ll need a more sophisticated solution. For that case, please post a new question).

Note that { ... } is called a process group, and that the last command in a process group must be separated from the closing } char with a ;.

Check out the man page for a few options.

IHTH