Hi,

I have a large text file with three columns. I'm trying to write a PERL script that splits the file up based on the value of the 3rd column. So every time the third column reads 0, a new file is created and all the data up until the next 0 is found is written to that new file. This should happen over and over until the initial file has been entirely split up.

ex data:


0 0 0
2 0 24
2 2 43
2 1 43
96 96 2871
97 97 2878
0 0 0
2 0 34
3 0 34
3 3 52


so with the data above, the file would be split into two files

data_1.txt would contain

0 0 0
2 0 24
2 2 43
2 1 43
96 96 2871
97 97 2878

and data_2.txt would contain

2 3 0
2 0 34
3 0 34
3 3 52

any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

oops, data_2.txt the file should contain

0 0 0
2 0 34
3 0 34
3 3 52

Ok, we'll be glad to help. Post what you've written so far, and where you're stuck...

May I suggest creating filenames whose numeric indexes are padded with enough leading zeros that they sort equivalently both alphabetically and numerically?
--- rod.

Hi,

This is my scripts so far. What seems to happen though, is all the data simply gets rewritten into the new file.


#!/usr/bin/perl
my $chr = 1;
my $Input = "data4.txt";
my $Output= "data_$chr.txt";
open (Data,"<$Input");
open (NData,">$Output");
foreach $line(<Data>){
($a, $b, $c) = split/\t/,$line;
if ($c eq 0) {
$chr++;
close NData;
open (NData,">$Output");
}
print NData ($line);
}
}

Thanks for the help!

--- rod.

And of course, there's always that perennial, pop favorite "split"

Won't necessarily work the way you want ... but might actually work a lot better

Just a thought...

Split won't be any good if the input isn't always split on the same
interval, which is what his sample data suggests; the criteria is
of the "0 0 0" kind, not "split at every 5th line".



Cheers,
Tink

Hi

Unfortunately the files are still all being rewritten to data_1.txt.

Does anyone know why this might be happening?

Thanks!

change:
to

"eq" is used to compare strings, another alternative is to chomp $c and compare with c$ eq "0".

since the first line matches the if, it will then immediately close the first file(data_1.txt) with 0 bytes, but it shouldn't be much drama to exclude it with a condition.

Thank you all very much for your help. The script is working great!