Filename Headers Above Files Without pr

The pr command () displays your files with a nice header above them. But it can also add a bunch of blank lines to fill a page and break the file to add more headers in the middle if the file is longer than a page. This article shows alternatives to pr that print a single header followed by the entire file, with no extra blank lines or page breaks.

When you redirect the output of more () (or pg) somewhere besides a terminal, it doesn't stop at the end of a screenful. It prints a little header above each file and outputs all the files at once. Instead of redirecting the output to a file, you could pipe it to another program - like your print spooler:
cat
% more file* > package % cat package :::::::::::::: file1 :::::::::::::: contents of file1.... :::::::::::::: file2 :::::::::::::: contents of file2.... ...
Another way to get similar headers is a feature of head (): when you give multiple filenames, it adds a header above each. To be sure head gives you all of your file (not just the head), use a line count bigger than any of your files, with a command like head -10000.
Bourne shell for loops with redirected output () let you combine a bunch of commands and grab the output of all of them at once. Here's a loop that runs ls -l on each file. It uses awk () to print just the file's permissions (field 1), last modification date (fields 6-8), and name (field 9, not including any name from a symbolic link). (You could pipe use more awk formatting to make a fancier heading - and get rid of the echo commands, too.) The output is redirected to a file named printme; as already stated, a pipe to your printer program will also work.
```
$ for f in file* > do > echo ===================================== > ls -l $f | awk '{print $1, $6, $7, $8, $9}' > echo ===================================== > cat $f > done >
printme $ cat printme ============================================= -rw-r----- Oct 28 07:28 file1 ============================================= contents of file1.... ============================================= -r--r--r-- Nov 3 09:35 file2 ============================================= contents of file2.... ...
```

cat	% `more file* > package` % `cat` `package` :::::::::::::: `file1` :::::::::::::: contents of file1.... :::::::::::::: `file2` :::::::::::::: contents of file2.... ...

If you use those last two tricks a lot, you might put them into an alias, function, or shell script ().

- JP