I decided to take your challenge after looking at yours and Blaine’s code. Here is my solutions for the file splitter problem:

# splits.rb — splits one input file into multiple output files
#
# Usage: ruby splits.rb infile count
#
# where infile is the file you want to split and
# count is the maximum number of lines you want in each file
#
# Author: Roger Henson 09/05/2006
#
if ARGV.size < 2 # if user did not supply
filename and count
File.open($0.to_s, “r”) do |sourcefile| # open this source code
while sourceline = sourcefile.gets # read source and
puts sourceline if sourcefile.lineno < 8 # write usage comments
end
end
exit # exit program
end

# initialize local variables
count = ARGV[0].to_i
infile = ARGV[1]
num = 0

# open and process the user’s input file using |file| block
File.open(infile, “r”) do |file|
while inline = file.gets # get next while
there are input lines
if ((file.lineno % count) == 1)||(file.lineno == 1) # make a new
file?
num += 1 # yes, add 1 to
filenumber count
outfile = infile + num.to_s # append filenumber
to filename
outline = File.open(outfile, “w+”) # open a new output
file
end
outline.puts(inline) # put one input line
to output file
end
end

—————————————————————————————-

To test it, I created an Excel macro to generate a csv file containing
the numbers 1 through 1100 and their corresponding value in words. For
example:
1,One
2,Two
3,Three
4,Four
5,Five
.. etc

This made it easy to see where the file breaks were during testing. The
program starts with a piece of code I converted to Ruby from one of my
REXX programs. It displays the first seven lines (comments) of the
source file when the user does not supply all arguments. By putting
program usage in comments at the top, I can provide a simple help
message and document the code at the same time.