Outputting the contents of files with an extra line break in between each

Question

I have two files with no line break at the end of the file. So when I call "cat file1 file2", the last line of file1 and the first line of file2 share a line. I need a command that will output the files correctly. I can't change the files.

Answer 1

Assuming your files are by themselves in the pwd:

for i in *; do cat "$i" && echo ""; done

Otherwise, you will need to create an array:

files=( "file0" "file1" "file2" )
for i in "${files[@]}"; do cat "$i" && echo ""; done

Answer 2

Simply use awk:

awk 1 file1 file2

Answer 3

You can very simply add a newline after file 1 and before file 2 with:

$ cat f1 <(echo "") f2

Example:

$ printf "line1\nline2" > f1
$ printf "line3\nline4" > f2
$ cat f1 f2
line1
line2line3
line4

With fix:

$ cat f1 <(echo "") f2
line1
line2
line3
line4

Answer 4

Well, A Simple idea would be to create a 3rd file with an empty line or 2 and add it in the middle....