Split portions from file to separate file in bash

Question

From here Split portion of string in bash, with some code changes, I managed to achieve the goal.

Now, I want to save the text in separate file.

I tried:

awk '/[code]:/{flag=1} flag; /[/code]:/{flag=0}{x="/home/user/split/File"++i".txt";}{print > x;}' /home/user/bigfile.nfo

but I got many files with one or no line (empty file with 0 bytes)

How to write all content between [code] and [/code] to separate file ? As many text found between those tag, as many files should be created, that's my expectation

Where is my mistake in code ?

The bigfile content

blavbl
[code]
sdasdasd
asdasd
...
[/code]

line X
line Y
etc
...

[code]
...
test
test
[/code]

blabla

[code]
Single line
[/code]

After ran script I get some files with one line instead all text between blocks

I expect to have

File1.txt

sdasdasd
asdasd
...

File2.txt

...
test
test

File3.txt

Single line

Etc

Answer 1

A few issues with OP's current code:

• the characters [, ] and / have special meaning in awk regex patterns; one solution is to escape said characters when looking for them as literal characters
• OP should make sure a file's descriptor is closed once no more output is going to said file (this should keep awk from (potentially) crashing due to 'out of file descriptor' errors)
• OP's current patterns include a trailing : but no such character exists in OP's sample input (ie, [code]: will not match [code])

One awk idea:

awk '
/^\[code\]/   { outfile="/home/user/split/File" ++i ".txt"; next }
/^\[\/code\]/ { close(outfile); outfile=""; next }
outfile       { print > outfile }
' bigfile.nfo

NOTE: technically ] (sans the escape \) should also work

This generates:

$ head File*.txt
==> File1.txt <==
sdasdasd
asdasd
...

==> File2.txt <==
...
test
test

==> File3.txt <==
Single line