How to display the file contents recursively?

Question

I always have to submit the source codes in my printed assignment report. I have to copy and paste my course codes into the document and I find that it is an annoying task.

I want to solve this "copy and paste" problem. Therefore I did it with cat like that but it only works in the current directory. I hope it can display the file contents recursively.

ls -R *.java | xargs cat >> all_course.txt

Answer 1

You can use find (man page) to accomplish this:

find -name "*.java" -exec cat {} \;

You can also add a -print before the -exec to print the file name before each cat operation

Answer 2

find . -name "*.java" -print0 | xargs -0 cat 

Answer 3

shopt -s globstar
cat **/*.java >> all_course.txt

That all_course file will be a bit of a mess. You probably want to add in some headers or footers:

for f in **/*.java; do
    echo "/* *********************************"
    echo " * $f"
    echo " * *********************************/"
    echo ""
    cat "$f"
    echo ""
    echo "/* *********************************"
    echo " * $f"
    echo " * *********************************/"
    echo ""
    echo ""
done > all_course.txt

Answer 4

find . -name "*.java" -exec cat {} \;

Answer 5

 grep -R -win --include='*\.java' '' * | less

Will show line no. also, for easy reading. Manipulate with grep switches for better results.