Merging Multiple text files

I have 1505 text files, each 96x6. I want to be able to merge them such that file 2 is below file 1, file 3 is below file 2 etc all in the same text file.

I was previously given this code

files=dir('*.txt');
fileout='merged.txt';
fout=fopen(fileout,'w');
for cntfiles=1:length(files)
  fin=fopen(files(cntfiles).name);
  while ~feof(fin)
    fprintf(fout,'%s %d\n',fgetl(fin),cntfiles);
  end
  fclose(fin);
end
fclose(fout);

At first it seemed to work but I found it jumbles the data a bit and I cannot use it.

Are there any alternatives?

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

I had exactly the same issue, and solved it by writing a function called natsortfiles to sort file-names into order based on their number values (not just ASCII order). You can get it here:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/47434-natural-order-filename-sort

S = natsortfiles(dir(..));

You can use it with your code by doing something like this (outline only):

S = dir('*.txt');
S = natsortfiles(S); % alphanumeric sort by filename
for k = 1:numel(S)
    fid = fopen(S(k).name,'rt');
    ... code here
    fclose(fid);
end

Answer 2

[Joseph Cheng]

Since you're just doing a complete copy and paste of the text files just read it in as binary and write it all. I had to put a \n after writing all the data for each file as i didn't have one at the last line of my file. Such that it would merge the last line of previous file with the first line of the current file.

files=dir('txt*.txt'); %additional filter so i didn't read in my merged file
fileout='merged.txt';
fout=fopen(fileout,'w');
for cntfiles=1:length(files)
  fin=fopen(files(cntfiles).name);
    temp = fread(fin,'uint8');
    fwrite(fout,temp,'uint8');
    fprintf(fout,'\n');
  fclose(fin);
end
fclose(fout);

[Robert]

Thanks for your answer, but the code wasn;t the problem. The data was being jumbled because it was reading it out of order e.g. x1, x10, x100, x1000 rather than x1,x2,x3,x4.

So now I have a new question; How can I solve this? Do I need to rename all of the text files or something? If so what to? Is there and easier way??

[Walter Roberson]

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/10959-sort-nat--natural-order-sort

[Joseph Cheng]

Ahh i misunderstood what you were saying about jumbling of data.

[Astik Sachan]

Follow below answer for the sorting of the files based on Name or Time or any other File Information

https://in.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/475385-merging-text-files-according-to-time#answer_386767

Answer 3

[Shreenath Krishnamurthy]

I have a follow up question on this thread. I am using the code given above by Robert to merge multiple text files in a directory. I want to have one single file that writes the 1st created file as first 2nd created file as 2nd data and so on ?