> grep . * I believe this command is present to prefix each line of output with the filename. But this ignores all the blank lines. That can of course be fixed

> grep . * I believe this command is present to prefix each line of output with the filename. But this ignores all the blank lines. That can of course be fixed easily with: grep ^ * Here is what I normally use myself if I want to show the content of files with their filenames: tail -n +1 * This shows the name of the file once at the beginning of each file and no more. Here is an example: $ tail -n +1 * ==> bar.txt <== bar 1 bar 2 bar 3 ==> baz.txt <== baz 1 baz 2 baz 3 ==> foo.txt <== foo 1 foo 2 foo 3