in reply to Auto-Merging textfiles

Peamasii:

You mean something like this?

my %files = map { $_=>undef } ('part1.txt', 'part2.txt', 'part3.txt'); while ( my $fl=1 ) { for (keys %files) { my @t=stat $_; if ($t[9]>$files{$_}) { $files{$_}=$t[9]; $fl=0; } } unless ($fl) { $fl = join(" ", "cat", keys %files); `$fl`; } }

Untested, yadda, yadda.

</snarky_mode>

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.