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

A word of warning about some of the existing answers - they will run very slow for very big files. For a 1.6 GB log file I gave up after a couple of hours, realising it would not finish before I returned to work the next day.

Two issues: the call to Add-Content opens, seeks and then closes the current destination file for every line in the source file. Reading a little of the source file each time and looking for the new lines will also slows things down, but my guess is that Add-Content is the main culprit.

The following variant produces slightly less pleasant output: it will split files in the middle of lines, but it splits my 1.6 GB log in less than a minute:

$from = "C:emplarge_log.txt"
$rootName = "C:emplarge_log_chunk"
$ext = "txt"
$upperBound = 100MB


$fromFile = [io.file]::OpenRead($from)
$buff = new-object byte[] $upperBound
$count = $idx = 0
try {
    do {
        "Reading $upperBound"
        $count = $fromFile.Read($buff, 0, $buff.Length)
        if ($count -gt 0) {
            $to = "{0}.{1}.{2}" -f ($rootName, $idx, $ext)
            $toFile = [io.file]::OpenWrite($to)
            try {
                "Writing $count to $to"
                $tofile.Write($buff, 0, $count)
            } finally {
                $tofile.Close()
            }
        }
        $idx ++
    } while ($count -gt 0)
}
finally {
    $fromFile.Close()
}