Generate Birthday List

[barbsie]

Why do you want to do this in bash?
IMHO it pays off to learn a (proper) scripting language like perl/python/ruby to do this kind of stuff. It's way more powerful and easier. The time you spend trying to do this in bash could better be used to learn such a language... but that's just my 2 cents

anyway...again: about 2 minutes of ruby coding:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
def append(str)
  f = File.open("append.txt", "r")
  line = f.readlines
  line.each do |li|
    puts str + li
  end
  f.close
end
arr = $<.readlines
arr.each do |s|
  s.chomp!
  append(s)
end

and then just create a file with stuff you want to append, named append.txt and pipe through the proggy like this :

barbsie-mbp:~ $ echo blah | ./append.rb 
blah1
blah12
blah123
barbsie-mbp:~ $

or with 2 files:

barbsie-mbp:~ $ cat blah.txt | ./append.rb 
blah1
blah12
blah123
blahblah1
blahblah12
blahblah123
barbsie-mbp:~ $

[imported_Joerg]

Hmmm...jou...you are certainly right Barabas ;-)
I will give it a try!!

Now I will work me through your code and give it some tests.

best regards
Joerg