built in method to merge idfs with eppy?

edit

This code will do the trick

import eppy

# open some files from the example folder
fname1 = "/Applications/EnergyPlus-9-3-0/ExampleFiles/1ZoneEvapCooler.idf"
idf1 = eppy.openidf(fname1) # will search and find the IDD file if it can :-)
fname2 = "/Applications/EnergyPlus-9-3-0/ExampleFiles/1ZoneParameterAspect.idf"
idf2 = eppy.openidf(fname2)  # will search and find the IDD file if it can :-)

# code to merge the idf2 into idf1
for key in idf2.idfobjects:
    for idfobject in idf2.idfobjects[key]:
        idf1.copyidfobject(idfobject)

idf1.saveas('a.idf') # maybe ....

I just noticed that your question says that you do not want to loop thru using copyidfobject(). I can't think of any way of doing the merge without looping through. There is no merge function in eppy. That looping thru is your merge function. I guess eppy is not as eppy-sh as it should be.

# if you have 5 or 6 idfs
# idfs = [idf1, idf2m idf3, idf4, idf5, idf6]

from eppy.modeleditor import IDF
idftxt = "" # empty string
from io import StringIO
fhandle = StringIO(idftxt) # we can make a file handle of a string
idf_merged = IDF(fhandle) # initialize the IDF object with the file handle

for idf in idfs:
    for key in idf.idfobjects:
        for idfobject in idf.idfobjects[key]:
            idf_merged.copyidfobject(idfobject)

idf_merged.saveas('merged.idf')   # save() won't work, since you don't have a file name

@bbrannon4, you could do it in a few line by retrieving the standard output. This would involve no text manipulation per se and no loops but it is not a full "eppy" solution.

stdout = sys.stdout
sys.stdout = six.StringIO()
idf1.printidf()
idf2.printidf()
idf_all = sys.stdout.getvalue()
sys.stdout = stdout

If you're just combining text files together, the simplest method, especially if you're already using Python, is just to use a Python script that merges text files. This one will merge all .idf files in the directory (including subfolders) into a single file called merge.idf. Just copy the script into whatever directory in which you want to combine all the IDFs.

# This script copies all .idf files in dir and writes them into a new file called merge.idf
import os
dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))

mereged_text = ""

for path, subdirs, files in os.walk(dir):
    for name in files:
        ext = os.path.splitext(name)[-1].lower()
        if ext == ".idf":
            with open(name) as fp:
                text = fp.read()
            mereged_text += text
            mereged_text += "\n" # if new line is desired
with open ('merge.idf', 'w') as fp:
    fp.write(mereged_text)