How to use paste command for many files whose names are not numbers? (paste columns from each file to one file)

Question

To paste many files, whose names are incremental numbers:

paste {1..8}| column -s $'\t' -t

• What if your files wasn't named by number, but only words?
• It can be up to ten files, what should I do?

In addition, you have a list of files that contains all the files you want.

So far, my approach is:

mkdir paste
j=0; while read i; do let j+=1; cp $i/ paste/$j; done<list;
cd paste; paste {1..8}| column -s $'\t' -t

I have no problem with this approach, I just want to ask if there is any shorter one.

---

Actually my files have the same name, just on different locations, for instance 1MUI/PQR/A/sum, 2QHK/PQR/A/sum, 2RKF/PQR/A/sum. The paste command should be paste {list}/PQR/A/sum. The list file is:

1MUI
2QHK
2RKF
...

Answer 1

With bash 4

mapfile -t <list
paste "${MAPFILE[@]}" | column -s $'\t' -t

for the paste {list}/PQR/A/sum version of the question

mapfile -t <list
paste "${MAPFILE[@]/%//PQR/A/sum}" | column -s $'\t' -t    

Answer 2

If all your files is in single directory, just use:

paste * | column -s $'\t' -t

If you have a list file contains all files, and each file name in one line, does not have special characters like space, you can try:

paste $(printf "%s " $(cat list)) | column -s $'\t' -t

Updated

With your updated information, you can try:

paste */PQR/A/sum | column -s $'\t' -t

If your parent directory contains many files and directory that you don't need, you must list all your directory explicitly:

paste {1MUI,2QHK,2RKF,...}/PQR/A/sum | column -s $'\t' -t