comment on

Considering you use the word "split" in the title of your post, it's funny you aren't using split to process the text.

our $all_text = join "", <ARGV>; # files, STDIN, etc.

our $key_phrase = "This is "; # should not be hard-coded
our $base_name  = "UserA_";
our $ext        = ".txt";

our @bits = split m/\Q$key_phrase\E/, $all_text;
# if line 1 data includes the key phrase, element 1 will be empty:
shift @bits if $all_text =~ m/^\Q$key_phrase\E/;
                                                  
my $count = 1;
foreach my $bit (@bits) {
  # suggest padding the index number so files sort correctly
  my $filename = sprintf "%s%2.2d%s", $base_name, $count++, $ext;

  open FILE, ">", $filename
    or die "Could not write to \"$filename\": $!\n";
  print FILE "$key_phrase$bit"; # put back the what split() excised
  close FILE;
}
[download]

This solution assumes that you can read all the data into memory, of course, but unless it's a million lines or an ongoing TCP/IP connection or something, I rarely have issues with that.

In reply to Re: Split and print hash based on regex by jh
in thread Split and print hash based on regex by Maire

Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.


Perl Monk, Perl Meditation
	PerlMonks