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I want to do exactly what unix "cat" does, but on my PC. Is there a simple equivalent command for the Windows command line?

Specifically I want to create a file from all the files of a given type in a folder

In Unix: 

cat *fna >all_fna_files.fna

(which joins all the ".fna" text files into one big text file)

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  • 1
    None of these suggestions can accept a redirect of STDIN.
    – will
    Apr 19, 2016 at 3:11
  • 4
    Powershell: cat file.txt
    – Kellen Stuart
    Oct 5, 2016 at 18:12
  • Cross-duplicate: stackoverflow.com/q/60244/11683
    – GSerg
    Jul 8, 2019 at 20:53
  • The answers provided are all commands available in different shells. Is there an executable which sends its arguments to stdout?
    – phreed
    Apr 14, 2020 at 22:02
  • @phreed If you are working on cmd.exe, there is the echo built-in. For PowerShell there is the Write-Output cmdlet (which also happens to be aliased by echo).
    – Sean Letendre
    Jan 4, 2021 at 21:14

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
463

type

It works across command.com, cmd, and PowerShell (though in the latter it's an alias for Get-Content, so is cat, so you could use either). From the Wikipedia article (emphasis mine):

In computing, type is a command in various VMS. AmigaDOS, CP/M, DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows command line interpreters (shells) such as COMMAND.COM, cmd.exe, 4DOS/4NT and Windows PowerShell. It is used to display the contents of specified files. It is analogous to the Unix cat command.

C:\>echo hi > a.txt
C:\>echo bye > b.txt
C:\>type a.txt b.txt > c.txt
C:\>type c.txt
hi
bye
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  • 18
    Good informative answer, so +1. Wish that I could give Microsoft a -1 though for the utterly ambiguous command name. type filename makes me think that the command should return the type of file, not the contents of the file!
    – PenguinCoder
    Jun 10, 2012 at 16:33
  • 53
    Cat doesn't really seem much better.
    – David Boike
    Jun 10, 2012 at 16:51
  • 10
    @DavidBoike Although cat is from con_cat_enate AFAIR.
    – Mark Hurd
    Jun 10, 2012 at 17:55
  • 24
    @davidboike It is much better because it actually means and stands for what it does: The cat program is a standard Unix utility that concatenates and lists files. The name is an abbreviation of catenate, a synonym of concatenate. Wikipedia Article Can you say the same for the MS-DOS type command??
    – PenguinCoder
    Jun 10, 2012 at 18:21
  • 23
    @PenguinCoder Except type doesn't concatenate files; it just types their contents to the screen. Its the piping in the example that is actually combining the files, not the type command.
    – Andy
    Jun 10, 2012 at 19:50
33

From the command shell:

copy a.txt + b.txt + c.txt output.txt

(But that follows the command shells use of control-Z as an end of file marker, so not suitable in some cases).

In PowerShell:

get-content a.txt,b.txt,c.txt | out-file output.txt

and you can control (using -Encoding parameter) the file encoding (which allows transcoding by using different encoding for the read and write).

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  • 8
    PowerShell aliases cat to Get-Content too. It's designed to accept many basic Linux commands without much, if any, modification.
    – Bob
    Jun 10, 2012 at 9:12
  • 1
    Bob, except if switches and options are involved.
    – Joey
    Jun 10, 2012 at 16:25
  • @Richard: Copy /b a + b + c output.txt doesn't check for on Ctrl-Z. Both variants will copy the entire file if there is NO ctrl-Z in the file.
    – Tonny
    Jun 10, 2012 at 18:28
  • 2
    Note that you can include wildcards too, the way wildcards work in windows means you won't be messed up by the expansion list not containing a +, so copy [/b] *.fna all_fna_files.fna..
    – Random832
    Jun 10, 2012 at 22:24
  • if I recall from an old test I once did, using COPY with /B to concatenate, will ignore CTRL-Z/EOF markers, and will do the concatenation properly! but judging by copy /? you may need to do a lot of /B like it seems maybe after copy, after each src file and after the dest file.. strange.
    – barlop
    Jun 14, 2012 at 6:38
5

I have just used the cat command in DOS (Windows 7 Pro) in the following manner and successfully merged 3 files (log1.txt, log2.txt, log3.txt) into a single file: 

cat log*.txt >> myBigLogFile.txt

Note: cat log*.txt > myBigLogFile2.txt also provide the same result, but it'll override the previous file.

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  • 11
    maybe you have GNU for Windows, or Cygwin in your path, or are using powershell because cat does not exist on a clean Windows 7 system. DOS is no longer a thing, but most people would use it to refer to cmd.exe.
    – Shanteva
    May 9, 2016 at 14:22
  • 2
    Windows CMD and MS-DOS are not the same thing. There's no cat command in both cmd and DOS, only cat alias in powershell
    – phuclv
    Jun 16, 2017 at 1:15
  • you can also use type command type *.txt > file.merge
    – Riz
    Oct 27, 2017 at 15:00

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