CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashbinarycopy
Ahatius
Ahatius

Reputation: 4875

How can I copy several binary files into one file on a Linux system?

I need to copy the content of a folder which contains binary files to one binary file in another directory.

In Windows I can just use:

copy file1 + file2 targetfile /B

I couldn't find something similar for Linux (I saw an approach with cat, but I'm unsure if this really works for binary files).

Upvotes: 81

Views: 109675

Answers (2)

geekosaur
geekosaur

Reputation: 61457

Unix has no distinction between text and binary files, which is why you can just cat them together:

cat file1 file2 > target_file

If target_file already exists and you want to append content to it, instead of overwriting, use instead:

cat file1 file2 >> target_file

Upvotes: 129

choroba
choroba

Reputation: 242383

cat is a very useful utility that will output the content of one or more files to standard output. That can be redirected with shell-funcionality into a file. It will work with binary or ascii files. In some programming languages that do not use linking, cat is used to merge binary files into a single executable file.

cat file1 file2 > target_file

Upvotes: 35

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