It would be helpful if you could post a small subset of some actual data. I guess you have something like this?:
row_nameA:col2:col3:col4:col5:col6...col200
row_nameB:col2:col3:col4:col5:col6...col200
It is completely unclear what separates the columns (above, ':')). This detail does matter.
I would give us say, the first 7 columns x 3 rows and put that data within <code></code> tags. Then show us your "best go" at this problem so far in Perl. Can you give more info about the size of this input file? How many rows? I suspect that the entire input file will fit comfortably in memory and that generating the 70 or so output files can proceed in a straightforward way. There are a number of techniques to do this. Your question is still too general to get a concrete answer other than "heck yes, Perl can do it!". Oh, also mention if performance is of any concern at all? I don't expect that to be an issue here because most of the time will be taken by I/O, generating the plethora of output files.
I guess there is the additional question, at least for my own curiosity: why are you doing this? Your application just seems odd enough (200 cols, 3 cols per file, about 70 output files), that perhaps there is a better way to do whatever it is that you are trying to do. This might be what is known as an X-Y problem.
Update:
Below is some code for one way to do this, there are other ways.
The code reads the input file and makes a 2-D array of the data. I presume that this amount of data will "fit" into memory without problems. If the line format is complex, then perhaps a .CSV module will be needed to parse each line? At each iteration of generating a new file, column 1 (the name) is reused and then the next left most 3 columns of data are consumed (the @data array "shrinks"). The loop ends when only column 1 remains of the original data.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $number_of_cols_per_file =3;
my @data; #this is a 2-D Array
while (my $line = <DATA>)
{
chomp $line;
my (@cols) = split (':', $line);
push @data, \@cols;
}
my $file_num=1;
while (@{$data[0]} > 1) # Any Columns after the name_column left?
{
# generate the next file
# This print would change to a "file open" statement for
# file_num, n...
print "File Number = ",$file_num++,"\n";
foreach my $row_ref (@data)
{
my $row_name=$row_ref->[0];
my @data_cols = splice (@$row_ref,1,$number_of_cols_per_file);
print join(":", $row_name, @data_cols), "\n";
}
}
=Prints:
File Number = 1
row_nameA:col2a:col3a:col4a
row_nameB:col2b:col3b:col4b
File Number = 2
row_nameA:col5a:col6a
row_nameB:col5b:col6b
=cut
__DATA__
row_nameA:col2a:col3a:col4a:col5a:col6a
row_nameB:col2b:col3b:col4b:col5b:col6b
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