Windows 7: Using DOs commands to merge txt files by date

I have a bunch of txt files that i want to merge into one file. But instead of A-Z order I want to do it by date, oldest first.

ie:

files/date:
1.txt 1/1/2001
2.txt 1/1/2000
3.txt 1/1/2002
etc

I want the combined file contents to be the contents of 1.txt+3.txt+2.txt,etc This is as far as i've gotten:
dir /B /o : D > %1
copy %1 newfile4.txt



I just need copy to take the variable and it should work. Why is this so hard though? I can't even find a windows 7 program to do this exact thing. I've been working on this for hours please help

Hi there
Maybe the Youngsters are so used to a GUI that command line stuff has been forgotten

This should do what you want. !!!!!

TYPE B.TXT>>A.TXT

Cheers
jimbo

Welcome to the windows 7 forums nycblkboy

The easiest method that I can recommend is to do this.

copy 1.txt+3.txt+2.txt 4.txt

if the files were binary files, then the /b option would be required. but text files only copy
up to the controlZ which is the EOF for text files.

rich

The reason this fails is because there is no + signs and the dir command lists each file on it's own line and like richnrockville said the syntax for the copy cmd needs to be "copy 1.txt+3.txt+2.txt newfile4.txt".

This will work for you (also works with text files that have spaces in their name)
Replace C:\FolderName with the path to the folder that contains the text files.

You need to run this from anywhere in cmd.exe just not in C:\FolderName or you'll end up doubling up because new.txt will also be appended last to the end of itself, unless you specify a full path for new.txt outside of C:\FolderName.

"&& echo.>> new.txt" will start the next text file on a new line in case the preceeding one doesn't end with a blank line. You may want to add a 2nd one of these if you want a blank line between the files but if one file already ends with a blank line then you'll have 2 blank lines in the new file.

No need to use a batch file but if you wanted to then you need to replace the 2 occurrences of %i with %%i

Both of these are correct but they need to be ordered oldest first so that is a hassle to type this up if there's 30 or 40 files.

EDIT: By default "dir /o:d" sorts by "Last Written" (Modified) but you can override this with the /t switch if you want to order by Created or Accessed.

Thank you Duzzy. I knew thee ways that the other 2 posters said. I don't think they understood I didn't want to do this manually. Thanks again you are a God!

Happy to have helped.