How to split a file by using keyword boundaries

Question

I have a vcf file that contains numerous vcards.

When importing the vcf file to outlook it seems to only import the first vcard.

Hence I want to split them up.

Given that a vcard starts with

BEGIN:VCARD

and ends with

END:VCARD

What is the best way to split each vcard into it's own file.

Thanks

UPDATE

Thanks for all the responses. As with questions of this nature there's various ways to skin a cat. Here's the reasoning why I chose the one I did.

ROUND-UP

Here's a roundup of what I liked from each answer and what drove me to select one of them.

• csplit: I really really liked the conciseness of this method. I just wished it was able to also set the file extension.
• gawk: It did everything i asked of it.
• paralell: Worked. But I had to install new things. (it also decided to make a new /bin dir in my home dir)
• perl: I liked that it created vcf based on contact's name. But the -o option didn't really work

Conclusion

• So the first one to go was perl because it was a bit broken
• Next was paralell because I had to install new things
• Next was csplit, because as far as I can see it can't create extensions on the output files
• So the award goes to gawk, for being a utility that's readily available, and versatile enough that I can chop and change the file name a bit. Bonus marks for cmp too :)

Answer 1

You can use awk for the job:

$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qtproject/qt-mobility\
/d7f10927176b8c3603efaaceb721b00af5e8605b/demos/qmlcontacts/contents/\
example.vcf

$ gawk ' /BEGIN:VCARD/ { close(fn); ++a; fn=sprintf("card_%02d.vcf", a); 
        print "Writing: ", fn } { print $0 > fn; } ' example.vcf
Writing:  card_01.vcf
Writing:  card_02.vcf
Writing:  card_03.vcf
Writing:  card_04.vcf
Writing:  card_05.vcf
Writing:  card_06.vcf
Writing:  card_07.vcf
Writing:  card_08.vcf
Writing:  card_09.vcf

$ cat card_0* > all.vcf
$ cmp example.vcf all.vcf
$ echo $?
0

Details

The awk line works like this: a is counter that is incremented on each BEGIN:VCARD line and at the same time the output filename is constructed using sprintf (stored in fn). For each line the current line ($0) is appended to the current file (named fn).

The last echo $? means that the cmp was successful, i.e. all single files concatenated are equal to the original example vcf example.

Note that the output redirection in awk works differently than in shell. That means that with > fn awk first checks if the file is already open. If it is already open then awk appends to it. If it is not then it opens and truncates it.

Because of this redirection logic we have to explicitly close the implicitly opened files, since otherwise the call would hit the open file limit in cases where the input file contains many records.

Answer 2

csplit -f vcard input.txt -z '/END:VCARD/+1' '{*}'

Answer 3

The Gnu version of csplit can set the extension - Ignacio's answer I think is the most concise, it just needs that last bit of tweaking to get the extension - using 'printf' format:

csplit -f vcard -b %02d.vcard input.txt -z '/END:VCARD/+1' '{*}'

Here's the relevant snippet from the gnu csplit man page:

   -b, --suffix-format=FORMAT
          use sprintf FORMAT instead of %02d

Answer 4

Using GNU Parallel you can do:

cat foo.vcf | parallel --pipe -N1 --recstart BEGIN:VCARD 'cat >{#}'

Or if you can refute http://oletange.blogspot.com/2013/10/useless-use-of-cat.html you can use this instead:

< foo.vcf parallel --pipe -N1 --recstart BEGIN:VCARD 'cat >{#}'

See more examples: http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/man.html

Watch the intro videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

10 seconds installation:

$ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
   fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
$ sha1sum install.sh | grep 883c667e01eed62f975ad28b6d50e22a
12345678 883c667e 01eed62f 975ad28b 6d50e22a
$ md5sum install.sh | grep cc21b4c943fd03e93ae1ae49e28573c0
cc21b4c9 43fd03e9 3ae1ae49 e28573c0
$ sha512sum install.sh | grep da012ec113b49a54e705f86d51e784ebced224fdf
79945d9d 250b42a4 2067bb00 99da012e c113b49a 54e705f8 6d51e784 ebced224
fdff3f52 ca588d64 e75f6033 61bd543f d631f592 2f87ceb2 ab034149 6df84a35
$ bash install.sh

Answer 5

You can use this script to do the job. It's called split-vcf-file.

Example usage

$ split_vcf.pl 

Error! Input VCF filename missing,  -i

Usage: perl split_vcf.pl -i input_file -o output_dir [OPTION]

    -v,         Verbosity levels, 1-3

To run the script:

mkdir vcf_files
split_vcf.pl  -i current.vcf -o vcf_files