Point is Perl has no mean to print_and_open_if_ne­cessary()

Sometimes Perl is not the best tool for the job. Awk does have that feature and here is an Awk program that does what our questioner asks:

#!/usr/bin/awk -f

BEGIN { FS = "\t" }

FNR == 1 {
    split("", Fields)    # clear fields array
    for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) Fields[i] = $i
    next
}

{ for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) print $i > Fields[i] }

[download]

Save it in a file and mark it executable; tested with GNU Awk. Feed it input on stdin or list the files you want it to read on the command line.

If you want to add prefixes or suffixes to the output file names, add them to the print statement, like so: print $i > ("out."Fields[i]".txt"); the parentheses ensure that the invisible concatenation operator will be parsed correctly.

In reply to Re^3: Split tab-separated file into separate files, based on column name (open on demand) by jcb
in thread Split tab-separated file into separate files, based on column name by Anonymous Monk

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