powershell or vbs; split a file into sections based on a line delimiter

Question

I'm trying to split up the output of a file and name them based on what's in the file. Example input file:

NMAP for 192.168.1.1
blah 1.1.1.1
blah blah
blah
NMAP for 192.168.1.2
blah 2.2.2.2
blah blah
blah
etc...

I would like break that into separate files

File1: 192.168.1.1.txt

NMAP for 192.168.1.1
blah 1.1.1.1
blah blah
blah

File2: 192.168.1.2.txt

NMAP for 192.168.1.2
blah 2.2.2.2
blah blah
blah

file etc..

I see I can do it with AWK, but I can't install unix utils on all the workstations, so I would like to do this in something that's included in windows 7 enterprise like powershell or VBS, or commandline.

Thanks!

A PowerShell using some regex would be a good fit for this. Give http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24835401/powershell-regular-expression-multiple-matches/24835992#24835992 a try and if you have issues you can update your question — Matt, Nov 21 '14 at 17:20
You writeown code here. Load your string. Use instr and left or mid to extract bits. — , Nov 21 '14 at 17:21

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 21 '14 at 17:27

5

Get-Content $inputFileName | Foreach-Object {
    if ($_ -match "NMAP for") {
      $outputFileName = "$($_ -replace "NMAP for ").txt"
    }
    if ($outputFileName -ne $null) {
      $_ | Add-Content $outputFileName
    }
}

answered Nov 21 '14 at 17:27

KevinD

3,023
2
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It worked very well! thank you! I have to learn powershell a bit more. I have a lot of work that will be based of this kind of work, so you have saved me an immense amount of time. – Dwight Dec 16 '14 at 16:32

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 21 '14 at 17:40

In VBScript you'd do something like this:

Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

Set re = New RegExp
re.Pattern = "^nmap for "
re.IgnoreCase = True

Set outFile = Nothing
Set inFile  = fso.OpenTextFile("C:\path\to\your.txt")
Do Until inFile.AtEndOfStream
  line = inFile.ReadLine
  If re.Test(line) Then
    If Not outFile Is Nothing Then outFile.Close
    Set outFile = fso.OpenTextFile(Split(line, " ")(2) & ".txt", 2)
  End If
  If Not outFile Is Nothing Then outFile.WriteLine
Loop
inFile.Close
If Not outFile Is Nothing Then outFile.Close

powershell or vbs; split a file into sections based on a line delimiter

2 Answers2