Merging multiple files as columns

The can command can be used to merge two files by row, one file after the other. Sometimes we need to merge two or more files side by side, joining the lines from file 1 with the lines from file 2.

How to do it...

The paste command performs column-wise concatenation:

    $ paste file1 file2 file3 ...

Here is an example:

    $ cat file1.txt
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    $ cat file2.txt
    slynux
    gnu
    bash
    hack
    $ paste file1.txt file2.txt
    1 slynux
    2 gnu
    3 bash
    4 hack
    5

The default delimiter is tab. We can specify the delimiter with -d:

    $ paste file1.txt file2.txt -d ","
    1,slynux
    2,gnu
    3,bash
    4,hack
    5,

...