Moving Content from one file to another with variables

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Greetings All,

Need some help, your input is appreciated.

Scenario:
I have five files, each has one line with comletely different content. I execute the command to combine all the five lines of content into a single file.

Goal:
I would like to take that single file that has the combined five lines in it and make those five lines a single variable that can then be passed along and used as content within a mailx command.

Any suggestions?

2 
cat file1 file2 file3 file4 file5 > outfile
var=$(cat outfile)

or if you want to skip creating the new file:

var=$(cat file1 file2 file3 file4 file5)
3 
var=${head -1 file1 file2 file3 file4 file5}
4

Thanks all; that works, but it puts the content on a single line, what if i wanted it to continue down a single column (new line).

file1
a
b
c

file2
d
e
f

var=`cat file1 file2`
echo $var

DESIRED RESULTS: fileX
a
b
c
d
e
f

Feedback?

---------- Post updated at 09:16 AM ---------- Previous update was at 08:56 AM ----------

NEVERMIND! LOL;

I was viewing it wrong. It does it properly; thank you all. Solution works.

v/r
Roy Arellano