Merge text files with same prefix into one

I need to merge a lot of text files into a single one. All files are named "patch_number.txt" and they are located in different directories. I've already tried some codes but I was only able to create a file for each different "patch_number.txt". For example: one file for every "patch_0.txt". Here's the code:

import os

paths = {}
for root, directories, files in os.walk('.'):
    for f in files:
        if f.startswith('patch_', 0, 5):
            if f not in paths:
                paths[f] = []
            paths[f].append(root)

for f, paths in paths.items():
    txt = []
    for p in paths:
        with open(os.path.join(p, f)) as f2:
            txt.append(f2.read())
    with open(f, 'w') as f3:
        f3.write(''.join(txt))

CodePudding user response：

you should have a global txt variable which would append all file content into it. and finally you write it to one file which is something like this:

import os

paths = {}
for root, directories, files in os.walk('.'):
    for f in files:
        if f.startswith('patch_', 0, 5):
            if f not in paths:
                paths[f] = []
            paths[f].append(root)

txt = []
for f, paths in paths.items():
    for p in paths:
        with open(os.path.join(p, f)) as f2:
            txt.append(f2.read())
          
with open(f, 'w') as f3:
    f3.write(''.join(txt))