Question

I am trying to split a large xml file into several smaller files. I found a solution to split each node into it’s own file:

awk '/<mono/{close("row"count".xml");count++}count{f="row"count".xml";print $0 > f}' file.xml 

The above code matches every “mono” node and outputs it to a file names row{rownumber}.xml. How can I print every 20 matches to a file?

Answer 1

I would say keep your “count” variable, and you just need to change the way you build your filename: f="row" int(count/20) ".xml"

You don’t have to explicitly close the file. All open files will be closed when awk exits. Given the comments, I’ll strike that remark. Note in the code below, a file will be closed up to 20 times, but reopened as required.

awk '
  /<mono/ {close f; count++; f = "row" int(count/20) ".xml"} 
  count {print >> f}
' file.xml