Simple way to add columns from multiple files

You can use this awk:

awk '{a[FNR]=$1; s[FNR]+=$2} END{for (i=1; i<=FNR; i++) print a[i], s[i]}' file1 file2# 0.71.0 0.11.5 1.62.0 2.12.5 1.5

FNR starts from 1 for each file so you can pass all of your input files to this awk command.

bash awk paste

I don't see why you think the paste/awk solution is unfeasible. Here is one way you could do it, assuming each file only has 2 columns:

paste * | awk '{ s=$2; for(i=4; i<=NF; i+=2) s+=$i; print $1, s }'

Output:

1.0 0.11.5 1.62.0 2.12.5 1.5

CodeHunter