Sorting and Merging text-files [SOLVED]

[DeaD_EyE]

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from pathlib import Path


def sort_by_int(path):
    # Path has the stem attribute, which is
    # the filename without the last extension
    # to sort the paths by integer, you
    # need to get the integer part of the str
    # and convert it to an integer
    # the _ is the character where you can split
    # maxsplit=1 does only split once,
    # so you get two elements back
    # if the _ is missing, split will raise an Exception
    return int(path.stem.split("_", maxsplit=1)[1])


# Use the high level Path object
outputs = Path.home() / "Outputs"
# print(outputs)
# Path: /home/username/Outputs

# use glob for easier search
# rglob is to search recursive
# glob and rglob replicates the shell-syntax
# the wildcard is one * and a ? stands for one character

search = "file_*.txt"
# sorted takes a key argument, which is used to define how it's sorted
# sort_by_int just returns an int and the sorted function
# is using this number to sort
sorted_outputs = sorted(outputs.glob(search), key=sort_by_int)
# the result is a list
# sorted consumes the iterable object and returns a list
# with the sorted elements

# now using this sorted list with Path objects
for path in sorted_outputs:
    # glob does not differe between files, directories or other
    # elements
    # so you need to check, if path is a file
    if path.is_file():
        # if it's a file, then open it
        # the Path onject do have the method open
        # it supports like the open function a context manager
        with path.open() as fd:
            # iterating this file line by line
            # where the line end is not stripped away
            for line in fd:
                # print the line, but tell print not to add an additional
                # line end, because the line has already a line end
                print(line, end="")
                # you can use the stdout to redirect the output
                # in your shell to a file for example or netcat
                # or gzip etc...

Relevant documentation:

• https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html
  
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#sorted
  
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/glob.html (pathlib uses this also)
  
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#print
  
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtyp...#str.split
  

Using the program (I named it randomly searchp.py):

Output:
[andre@andre-Fujitsu-i5 ~]$ python3 searchp.py | gzip > output.txt.gz
[andre@andre-Fujitsu-i5 ~]$ zcat output.txt.gz 
666
123
000

I created the Outputs directory in my home directory and put 3 files in, where each file had only one line with a newline character at the end.