Inputting files alphabetically

Question

I am creating an anthology of poems and songs, and have a main file where I am using \input to insert separates TeX files which contain the poems.

I was wondering if there was a simpler way of inserting all of the files in alphabetical order based on filename instead of a separate \input for each file?

Could anybody help?

Thank you to for pointing me in the direction of the other questions - they didn't come up when I googled my queries. I am trying to adapt the code in this post but I am getting 2 errors from it. My code is as follows at the moment

\documentclass{minimal}

\makeatletter%
\def \app@exe {\immediate\write18}

\def \inputAllFiles [#1]{%
  \app@exe{cmd /c dir /b *.tex > \jobname.tmp}
  \InputIfFileExists{\jobname.tmp}{}{}
  \AtEndOfDocument{\app@exe{rm -f #1/\jobname.tmp}}}
\makeatother%

\begin{document}

\inputAllFiles{.}

\end{document}

The errors messages I am getting are both on the line with the \inputAllFiles command and say: Use of \inputAllFiles doesn't match its definition and Too many }'s.

I have tried fiddling around with the code, but noting I seem to do helps. Could anybody help to see where I am going wrong?

Welcome to TeX.SE. Related: How to iterate through the name of files in a folder. The accepted answer here is probably already in alphabetical order, but if not it should be easily sorted. — Peter Grill, Mar 03 '14 at 23:34
Why do you add spaces and brackets in the code copied from linked answer? — Paul Gaborit, Mar 06 '14 at 22:57
The original code wasn't being recognised at all, so I looked up the \def command online and that seemed to be the correct syntax. — Nikel King, Mar 07 '14 at 22:18

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 04 '14 at 01:49

I'd write a script in whatever language is handy, which takes the file listing and massages it into (the guts of) the file doing the including.

I'm sure there is a LaTeX way of doing this, but in my extremely humble opinion this kind of solution is doable (and understandable) by mere mortals like myself.

Inputting files alphabetically

1 Answers1