Is this efficient?
Sure. However, using the the /b
switch can/may increase performance by simply concatenating the bytes instead of processing the files as text. This is particularly noticeable when concatenating very large text files.
Is it doing what I'm expecting?
Usually yes, but if the file was made in Linux, Mac, or other system with differing file-/line-terminators, then it may give unexpected results. It is a good idea to use the /b
switch in general, even for text files.
I want to know is it actually appending to file1.txt or is it copying file1.txt (bad), concatenating file2 and then renaming to file1.txt (which is not efficient)?
Yes, it is creating a new, temporary file, deleting the original, and renaming the temp file to the original name, but deleting and renaming take no time and unless the original file is massive, you won’t normally notice even the (redundant) copying of the original file.