Question

I want to split file according to it’s content.
My dummy file looks like that:

info   info    info    cat
info   info    info    cow
info   info    info    dog
info   info    info    dinosaur 
info   info    info    bat

$4 words starts with different letters (C,D,B) – I want to split file into multiples according to the first letter of $4.
Preferable output (3 different files) looks like that:

file_c

info   info    info    cat  
info   info    info    cow

file_d

info   info    info    dog
info   info    info    dinosaur 

file_b

info   info    info    bat

Hope someone can help me with this.

Answer 1

this oneliner should work:

awk '{print $0 > "file_"substr($4,0,1)}' yourfile