Question:
I want to split a TXT file into smaller TXT files. The program should split the file every time there are three empty lines. For example:
Paragraph1Paragraph2
Paragraph1 and Paragraph 2 would become separate text files. I would be grateful if you could tell me which commands I should use or even build such program if it isn’t too difficult.
Answer:
That’s an interesting problem. Assuming that you won’t ever need to go back to an original file, you can use the same file variable to handle all the destination files. It’s just a matter of counting. Here’s wrapper procedure that ought to work.
procedure CreateABunchOfFiles(SourceFile : String);var fSource, fDest : TextFile; buf : String; BlankCounter, DestCounter : Integer;begin //Let's initialize the variables DestCounter := 1; BlankCounter := 1; AssignFile(fSource, SourceFile); Reset(fSource); AssignFile(fDest, 'Dest' + IntToStr(DestCounter) + '.TXT'); Rewrite(fDest); //Now go through the file line by line while NOT EOF(fSource) do begin ReadLn(fSource, buf); //Make sure we remove all trailing and leading spaces //to catch blank lines. If we come across a blank line, //then skip the rest of processing and move to the next //one. This is ultra important because some text files' //blank lines contain spaces or null characters, they'll //be read as real bytes. if (TrimLeft(TrimRight(buf)) = '') then Inc(BlankCounter); else //Okay, we've come across three blank lines in a row if (BlankCounter = 3) then begin //Reset the counter BlankCounter := 1; //Close current destination file CloseFile(fDest); //Increment the Destination File ID (DestCounter) Inc(DestCounter); //Open up a new file based on the new name AssignFile(fDest, 'Dest' + IntToStr(DestCounter) +'.TXT'); Rewrite(fDest); end else //Otherwise, just write the line to the currentdestination WriteLn(fDest, buf); end;end;
This solution is pretty straightforward File I/O stuff, so I won’t go into detail here. Look over the logic to understand how it works. I commented it pretty well so you can follow it easily.
