Shell Programming and Scripting

thank you, yes first got an error, then added the brackets:

Code:

awk 'NF>0 {if (NF==4) {fn=$1; print $2,$3,$4 > (fn".txt")} else {print $0 >> (fn".txt")}}' test_fsl.txt

so that worked.
the resulting textfiles still show an empty space before lies 2 to 6 (not in line 1 because there was the string). i don't understand enough about the way those textfiles are encoded, i.e. what they actually contain or not. but maybe i should remove those in the resulting files to make sure. so i got rid of these with:

Code:

awk '{$1=$1}1' SP.txt > SP2.txt

. maybe that could be combined with the first awk command? but else i just put it in sequentially, actually i could do that first i guess...

Given the file sticks to the structure posted above, try

Code:

awk '$1 {if (FN) close (FN); FN=$1".txt"} NF==4{print $2,$3,$4 >FN}' FS="\t" OFS="\t" file

.
Anyhow, that is not a *nix text file; you should get rid of the <CR> (^M, \r,carriage return) char first...

Thank you! This works as well!