Create header to table from the output of the command "paste"

Question

I have folder (data) contain large number of text files. Each text file contain one column of numbers, the column contain 30 numbers. I want to create table that combine the columns in these text files. I used the following command:

  cd data
  paste *.txt > all_data.txt

The output is as follows:

0.834679    0.612341    0.510057    0.580128  .....
1.837894    1.061547    0.961449    1.343096  .....
1.638215    1.024628    1.113596    1.80506  .....
1.596119    0.971842    1.14204     1.73881  .....
1.568142    1.025716    1.217219    1.769668  .....
1.554016    0.977165    1.226769    1.786335  .....
1.543137    1.001812    1.247598    1.840443  .....
1.491823    0.99437     1.28337     1.784271  .....
1.371208    0.931998    1.259749    1.717408  .....
1.390867    0.905996    1.300722    1.739213  .....
1.35813     0.283377    1.307122    1.733058  .....
......

This command combined all the columns in one big spreadsheet. My question: is there any way to paste each column in the text files and make the text file name header to that column. As follows:

text_file1  text_file2  text_file3  text_file4 ....  
0.834679    0.612341    0.510057    0.580128  .....
1.837894    1.061547    0.961449    1.343096  .....
1.638215    1.024628    1.113596    1.80506  .....
1.596119    0.971842    1.14204     1.73881  .....
1.568142    1.025716    1.217219    1.769668  .....
1.554016    0.977165    1.226769    1.786335  .....
1.543137    1.001812    1.247598    1.840443  .....
1.491823    0.99437     1.28337     1.784271  .....
1.371208    0.931998    1.259749    1.717408  .....
1.390867    0.905996    1.300722    1.739213  .....
1.35813     0.283377    1.307122    1.733058  .....
......

Answer 1

You can do:

paste_with_header() (
  IFS=$(printf '\t') # or IFS=$'\t' with some shells
  printf '%s\n' "$*"
  paste -- "$@"
)

paste_with_header text_file* > all_data.txt

"$*" is expanded to the list of positional parameters (the arguments to the function) joined with the first character of $IFS, which we set to TAB, the character that paste also uses to join lines of the file.

To remove the file extensions in the header, with zsh:

paste_with_header() (
  printf '%s\n' ${(pj:\t:)@:r}
  paste -- "$@"
)

• ${@:r} expands to the root name (extension removed) of each positional parameter.
• j:\t: parameter expansion flag to join on \t. With p that \t is interpreted as a TAB

Or with ksh93, zsh or bash assuming files do have an extension or that no directory in their path components contain dots:

paste_with_header() (
  IFS=$'\t'
  printf '%s\n' "${@%.*}"
  paste -- "$@"
)

${@%.*} removes the shortest trailing part that matches .* off the end of each of the positional parameters (foo.txt becomes foo, but beware that ./foo becomes the empty string).

(those obviously assume the file names don't contain tabulations or newline characters).