How can I split a text file using PowerShell?

Question

I need to split a large (500 MB) text file (a log4net exception file) into manageable chunks like 100 5 MB files would be fine.

I would think this should be a walk in the park for PowerShell. How can I do it?

Answer 1

Same as all the answers here, but using StreamReader/StreamWriter to split on new lines (line by line, instead of trying to read the whole file into memory at once). This approach can split big files in the fastest way I know of.

Note: I do very little error checking, so I can't guarantee it'll work smoothly for your case. It did for mine (1.7 GB TXT file of 4 million lines split in 100,000 lines per file in 95 seconds).

#split test
$sw = new-object System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch
$sw.Start()
$filename = "C:\Users\Vincent\Desktop\test.txt"
$rootName = "C:\Users\Vincent\Desktop\result"
$ext = ".txt"

$linesperFile = 100000#100k
$filecount = 1
$reader = $null
try{
    $reader = [io.file]::OpenText($filename)
    try{
        "Creating file number $filecount"
        $writer = [io.file]::CreateText("{0}{1}.{2}" -f ($rootName,$filecount.ToString("000"),$ext))
        $filecount++
        $linecount = 0

        while($reader.EndOfStream -ne $true) {
            "Reading $linesperFile"
            while( ($linecount -lt $linesperFile) -and ($reader.EndOfStream -ne $true)){
                $writer.WriteLine($reader.ReadLine());
                $linecount++
            }

            if($reader.EndOfStream -ne $true) {
                "Closing file"
                $writer.Dispose();

                "Creating file number $filecount"
                $writer = [io.file]::CreateText("{0}{1}.{2}" -f ($rootName,$filecount.ToString("000"),$ext))
                $filecount++
                $linecount = 0
            }
        }
    } finally {
        $writer.Dispose();
    }
} finally {
    $reader.Dispose();
}
$sw.Stop()

Write-Host "Split complete in " $sw.Elapsed.TotalSeconds "seconds"

Output splitting a 1.7 GB file:

...
Creating file number 45
Reading 100000
Closing file
Creating file number 46
Reading 100000
Closing file
Creating file number 47
Reading 100000
Closing file
Creating file number 48
Reading 100000
Split complete in  95.6308289 seconds

Answer 2

I've made a little modification to split files based on size of each part.

##############################################################################
#.SYNOPSIS
# Breaks a text file into multiple text files in a destination, where each
# file contains a maximum number of lines.
#
#.DESCRIPTION
# When working with files that have a header, it is often desirable to have
# the header information repeated in all of the split files. Split-File
# supports this functionality with the -rc (RepeatCount) parameter.
#
#.PARAMETER Path
# Specifies the path to an item. Wildcards are permitted.
#
#.PARAMETER LiteralPath
# Specifies the path to an item. Unlike Path, the value of LiteralPath is
# used exactly as it is typed. No characters are interpreted as wildcards.
# If the path includes escape characters, enclose it in single quotation marks.
# Single quotation marks tell Windows PowerShell not to interpret any
# characters as escape sequences.
#
#.PARAMETER Destination
# (Or -d) The location in which to place the chunked output files.
#
#.PARAMETER Size
# (Or -s) The maximum size of each file. Size must be expressed in MB.
#
#.PARAMETER RepeatCount
# (Or -rc) Specifies the number of "header" lines from the input file that will
# be repeated in each output file. Typically this is 0 or 1 but it can be any
# number of lines.
#
#.EXAMPLE
# Split-File bigfile.csv -s 20 -rc 1
#
#.LINK 
# Out-TempFile
##############################################################################
function Split-File {

    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParameterSetName='Path')]
    param(

        [Parameter(ParameterSetName='Path', Position=1, Mandatory=$true, ValueFromPipeline=$true, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
        [String[]]$Path,

        [Alias("PSPath")]
        [Parameter(ParameterSetName='LiteralPath', Mandatory=$true, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
        [String[]]$LiteralPath,

        [Alias('s')]
        [Parameter(Position=2,Mandatory=$true)]
        [Int32]$Size,

        [Alias('d')]
        [Parameter(Position=3)]
        [String]$Destination='.',

        [Alias('rc')]
        [Parameter()]
        [Int32]$RepeatCount

    )

    process {

  # yeah! the cmdlet supports wildcards
        if ($LiteralPath) { $ResolveArgs = @{LiteralPath=$LiteralPath} }
        elseif ($Path) { $ResolveArgs = @{Path=$Path} }

        Resolve-Path @ResolveArgs | %{

            $InputName = [IO.Path]::GetFileNameWithoutExtension($_)
            $InputExt  = [IO.Path]::GetExtension($_)

            if ($RepeatCount) { $Header = Get-Content $_ -TotalCount:$RepeatCount }

   Resolve-Path @ResolveArgs | %{

    $InputName = [IO.Path]::GetFileNameWithoutExtension($_)
    $InputExt  = [IO.Path]::GetExtension($_)

    if ($RepeatCount) { $Header = Get-Content $_ -TotalCount:$RepeatCount }

    # get the input file in manageable chunks

    $Part = 1
    $buffer = ""
    Get-Content $_ -ReadCount:1 | %{

     # make an output filename with a suffix
     $OutputFile = Join-Path $Destination ('{0}-{1:0000}{2}' -f ($InputName,$Part,$InputExt))

     # In the first iteration the header will be
     # copied to the output file as usual
     # on subsequent iterations we have to do it
     if ($RepeatCount -and $Part -gt 1) {
      Set-Content $OutputFile $Header
     }

     # test buffer size and dump data only if buffer is greater than size
     if ($buffer.length -gt ($Size * 1MB)) {
      # write this chunk to the output file
      Write-Host "Writing $OutputFile"
      Add-Content $OutputFile $buffer
      $Part += 1
      $buffer = ""
     } else {
      $buffer += $_ + "`r"
     }
    }
   }
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

This is a somewhat easy task for PowerShell, complicated by the fact that the standard Get-Content cmdlet doesn't handle very large files too well. What I would suggest to do is use the .NET StreamReader class to read the file line by line in your PowerShell script and use the Add-Content cmdlet to write each line to a file with an ever-increasing index in the filename. Something like this:

$upperBound = 50MB # calculated by Powershell
$ext = "log"
$rootName = "log_"

$reader = new-object System.IO.StreamReader("C:\Exceptions.log")
$count = 1
$fileName = "{0}{1}.{2}" -f ($rootName, $count, $ext)
while(($line = $reader.ReadLine()) -ne $null)
{
    Add-Content -path $fileName -value $line
    if((Get-ChildItem -path $fileName).Length -ge $upperBound)
    {
        ++$count
        $fileName = "{0}{1}.{2}" -f ($rootName, $count, $ext)
    }
}

$reader.Close()

Answer 4

Here is my solution to split a file called patch6.txt (about 32,000 lines) into separate files of 1000 lines each. Its not quick, but it does the job.

$infile = "D:\Malcolm\Test\patch6.txt"
$path = "D:\Malcolm\Test\"
$lineCount = 1
$fileCount = 1

foreach ($computername in get-content $infile)
{
    write $computername | out-file -Append $path_$fileCount".txt"
    $lineCount++

    if ($lineCount -eq 1000)
    {
        $fileCount++
        $lineCount = 1
    }
}

Answer 5

I found this question while trying to split multiple contacts in a single vCard VCF file to separate files. Here's what I did based on Lee's code. I had to look up how to create a new StreamReader object and changed null to $null.

$reader = new-object System.IO.StreamReader("C:\Contacts.vcf")
$count = 1
$filename = "C:\Contacts\{0}.vcf" -f ($count) 

while(($line = $reader.ReadLine()) -ne $null)
{
    Add-Content -path $fileName -value $line

    if($line -eq "END:VCARD")
    {
        ++$count
        $filename = "C:\Contacts\{0}.vcf" -f ($count)
    }
}

$reader.Close()

Answer 6

Simple one-liner to split based on number of lines (100 in this case):

$i=0; Get-Content .....log -ReadCount 100 | %{$i++; $_ | Out-File out_$i.txt}