I have a 13Mb vcf file and would love to split this into it's
component parts.

i.e. I want to have a seperate .vcf file for each addressee.

For those script experts that are unfamiliar with v-cards
it is a text file that looks like this.

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:LastName;FirstName;;;
FN:FirstName LastName
....
....
END:VCARD
BEGIN:VCARD
....

I'd like to have the seperate .vcf files named on the N field
with a syntax like: LastName-FirstName.vcf

Hope someone can give some hints to a script newbie.

Chris

ChrisOD wrote:
> I have a 13Mb vcf file and would love to split this into it's
> component parts.
>
> i.e. I want to have a seperate .vcf file for each addressee.
>
> For those script experts that are unfamiliar with v-cards
> it is a text file that looks like this.
>
> BEGIN:VCARD
> VERSION:3.0
> N:LastName;FirstName;;;
> FN:FirstName LastName
> ...
> ...
> END:VCARD
> BEGIN:VCARD
> ...
>
> I'd like to have the seperate .vcf files named on the N field
> with a syntax like: LastName-FirstName.vcf

perl -pe'
BEGIN { $/ = "END:VCARD\n" }
open STDOUT, sprintf ">>%s-%s.vcf", /^N[^;]+);([^;]+);/m
' YourBigFile.vcf



John
--
Perl isn't a toolbox, but a small machine shop where you
can special-order certain sorts of tools at low cost and
in short order. -- Larry Wall

Try awk.

vcf.awk:
/END:/ { # end of vcard
vcard = vcard $0;
print vcard >filename;
vcard = "";
next;
}
{ # append line to vcard
vcard = vcard $0 "\n";
}
/^N:/ { # N:LastName;FirstName;;;
n = split($0,a,":");
n = split(a[2],b,";");
filename = b[1] "-" b[2] ".vcf";
}

and then
awk -f vcf.awk vcffile

On 13 Mrz., 21:09, ChrisOD <ch...@dont.send.me.any.email> wrote:
> I have a 13Mb vcf file and would love to split this into it's
> component parts.
>
> i.e. I want to have a seperate .vcf file for each addressee.
>
> For those script experts that are unfamiliar with v-cards
> it is a text file that looks like this.
>
> BEGIN:VCARD
> VERSION:3.0
> N:LastName;FirstName;;;
> FN:FirstName LastName
> ...
> ...
> END:VCARD
> BEGIN:VCARD
> ...
>
> I'd like to have the seperate .vcf files named on the N field
> with a syntax like: LastName-FirstName.vcf
>
> Hope someone can give some hints to a script newbie.
>
> Chris

rgds
andreas

On 2008-03-13, ChrisOD <chris@dont.send.me.any.email> wrote:
> I have a 13Mb vcf file and would love to split this into it's
> component parts.
>
> i.e. I want to have a seperate .vcf file for each addressee.
>
> For those script experts that are unfamiliar with v-cards
> it is a text file that looks like this.
>
> BEGIN:VCARD
> VERSION:3.0
> N:LastName;FirstName;;;
> FN:FirstName LastName
> ...
> ...
> END:VCARD
> BEGIN:VCARD
> ...
>
> I'd like to have the seperate .vcf files named on the N field
> with a syntax like: LastName-FirstName.vcf
>
> Hope someone can give some hints to a script newbie.
>
> Chris
>
>
Thanks John and Andy.

The awk example worked just fine.
The perl only extracted the first vcard so

I love the ease of here for someone who is too rusty at scripts.

You guys rock.

Chris

ChrisOD wrote:

> I have a 13Mb vcf file and would love to split this into it's
> component parts.
>[cut]
> I'd like to have the seperate .vcf files named on the N field
> with a syntax like: LastName-FirstName.vcf
>
> Hope someone can give some hints to a script newbie.

Besides awk, another way is to use csplit (assuming max 100000 vcards):

$ csplit -n 5 -z vcard.txt '/BEGIN:VCARD/' '{*}'

This is not really useful by itself since you don't have much control over
file names.
However, you can use a subsequent loop to rename all the files.

--
All the commands are tested with bash and GNU tools, so they may use
nonstandard features. I try to specify when something is nonstandard (if I
know that), but I may still miss something. Corrections are welcome.