Generating a single LaTeX file by merging different LaTeX files

Question

I have a main LaTeX file which \input{} (aka imports) many other LaTeX files.

For example:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\input{input1.tex}
\input{./Input_folder_1/input2.tex}
\input{input3.tex}
\input{./Input_folder_2/Input_folder_3/input4.tex}
\end{document}

Let's call the above file say main.tex. I want a single LaTeX file, which imports contents from input1.tex,input2.tex, input3.tex and input4.tex, so that I have only one single LaTeX file instead of the above four LaTeX files.

How do I go about writing a bash-script which does this job for me?

PS: I need to submit an article to a journal and I thought it would be good to have a single .tex file.

The issue is the following: I have different files in sub-directories in a recursive manner and hence I cannot upload these individual files since the directory structure in the input command is on the local folder on my computer.

I could of course put these manually but I thought if there would be a way out similar to the .bbl file for the bibliography.

Solution

This solution should work.

perl latexpand main.tex > newarticle.tex

Comments

[geethujoseph]

You have many tools that seem to do what you want listed here: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/21838/…

[MERose]

The answer isn't complete, I believe, because an installation (or sth.) is missing. I get Can't open perl script "latexpand": No such file or directory

[grantbow]

You can install from ctan.org/pkg/latexpand.