Question

How do I split a file to N files using as a filename the first 2 chars on the line.

Ex input file:

AA23409234TEXT
BA23201202Other Text
AA23509234YADA
BA23202202More Text.
C1000000000000000000

Should generate 3 files:

AA.txt

AA23409234TEXT
AA23509234YADA

BA.txt

BA23201202Other Text
BA23202202More Text.

C1.txt

C1000000000000000000

I’m thinking of using a sed script similar to this

/^(..)/w \1

But what that really does is create a file named ‘\1’ instead of the capture group.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

$ awk '{fname=substr($0, 0, 2); print >>fname}' input.txt

Or

$ while read line; do echo "$line" >>"${line:0:2}"; done <input.txt