H-Cat

Hierarchical file concatenation

Motivation

Many config files or source files are too big to be in just one file. Splitting them up makes them more readable and modular. However the language specifications do not necessarily account for this. Utilities like 'cat' can combine files sequentially, but sometimes it is preferable to have a hierarchical approach.

Idea

A simple combiner utility that pre-processes input files by reading them, and whenever it encounters a '#include', it includes the indicated file at that point and recursively scans that file. The result is a single stream of content that can be passed to the regular processor.

Synopsis

hcat <file> [<include-tag>]

file: The name of the topmost file.
include-tag: An alternative include indicator, if '#include' is unsuitable.

Output is to the stdout.

Example

file1.txt contains

hello
  #include file2.txt
world

file2.txt contains

to all
in the

output would be

hello
  to all
  in the
world

Notice that indentation is inherited.

License

All original code is distributed under the Boost License (see LICENSE.txt).