according to 'man bash', pathname expansion results in "an alphabetically sorted list". with that, i should think: cat file_prefix_* > final_file should be sufficient. BTW linux has a much longer command line length limit, though i don't know what it is; i imagine 4K, at least. On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 06:45:29AM -0600, Brent Harding wrote: > I didn't use xargs, but I did cat `ls | sort` >file. > At 04:33 PM 11/30/01 -0500, Nicolas wrote: > > ls file_prefix_* | sort | xargs cat > final_file > >> I've heard of this, but it doesn't appear to be the thing, dos would do it > >> if I copied and typed in all the names, would run out of command line > >> anyway, 255 character limit. [ snip ] > >> How do > >> >> > I put the files together to make one huge file without having to type all > >> >> > the echo <file.a01 >> file > >> >> > echo <file.a02 >> file > >> >> > and so on up to 99? > >> >> > There must be a copy a range, like echo <file.a01-a99 >> file, or something > >> >> > on that order. Using * won't necessarily copy them in numeric order though. -- Henry Yen Aegis Information Systems, Inc. Senior Systems Programmer Hicksville, New York