Breaking large file into pieces

[Randal Schwartz]

In article <1990Sep11.134238.20218 at dg-rtp.dg.com>, monroe at dg-rtp (Mark A Monroe) writes:
| I want to rip a large file into pieces, naming new files according
| to an ID string in the large file.  For example, the large file contains
| records that look like this:
| 
| xxx-00001239	data	data	data
| description
|        .
|        .
| (variable length)
|        .
| 						<---blank line
| xxx-00001489	data	data	data
| description
|        .
|        .
| (variable length)
|        .
| 						<---blank line
| xxx-00001326	data	data	data
| 
| When I find a line in the large data file that starts
| with "xxx-0000", I want to open a file named "xxx-0000<number>",
| like "xxx-00001489", and write every line, including
| the current one, into it.  When I see another "xxx-0000",
| I want to close the file, open a new file named for the new id 
| string, and continue writing.  At the end of the large data
| file, close all files and exit.
| 
| Any suggestions?  

You didn't say "and I don't want it in Perl", so I'm considering
this solution fair game...

perl -pe 'open(STDOUT,">$1") if /^(xxx-\d+)/;' bigdatafile

Pretty durn simple.  The right tool for the job.  Yeah, you could do
it with an awk script feeding into a /bin/sh (or with a smarter awk),
but this is too easy.

Just another Perl hacker,
-- 
/=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\
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