CBSPLIT 0.2  Copyright Rob Weir, 1994-96

CompuServe: 71165,2722
Internet: rweir@cybercom.net

This program is free for personal use.

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WARNING: This program produces modified ChessBase data files, something
quite difficult, and quite undocumented.  This program seems to work for
me, but don't you think it would be better if you made a backup of your
BIG ChessBase database before using me?! 

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Files you now have:

CBSPLIT.TXT   the file you are reading
CBSPLIT.EXE   the CBSPLIT program

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New in version 0.2 32-bit

This 32-bit version should be functionally identical to the
previous 16-bit release.  What I have done is rewrite much of the file
access and sorting routines to take advantage of the capabilities of WIN32,
using virtual memory, memory-mapped files, etc.  

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The program CBSPLIT takes a ChessBase data file and "splits" it into a number
of smaller databases, each less than a given length, or containing less than
a given number of games.

CBSPLIT produces new files, which are sequentially labeled, i.e.
1.CBF, 2.CBF, 3.CBF, etc.  The original data file is left untouched.                   

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Now why would you want a program like CBSPLIT? I'm glad you asked <g>!

1) If you only have KnightStalker or Fritz, you are limited to 5000 games.
If you happen across a datafile larger than this, CBSPLIT can be used to
produce files of a usable size.

2) Some ChessBase utilities have size limits, like CBTree (4096 games), 
Nunn Utilities (around 130,000 games), etc.  CBSPLIT can be used to produce
files of a size which will work with these programs.  By the way, CBSPLIT
has no size limit!

3) Sometimes you want to move a moderate sized database from one machine to
another.  You can use CBSPLIT to produce seperate files which "just fit" on
the disk.

CBSPLIT doesn't do anything fancy, but it sure is easier than doing a split
by hand!

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CBSPLIT is easy to use.  You just pass in on the command line a split
criterion and a name of a ChessBase file as arguments and let it run.

CBSPLIT criterion file.cbf

Possible split criteria are:

-games=N 

This splits your file into several files, each of which has N games.  The
last file will have an "odd" number of games, if N doesn't evenly divide
the original file.

-size=N   

This splits your file into several files, each of which is at most 
N kilobytes long.  A kilobyte is here defined to be 1024 bytes and includes
the CBF and CBI file.  N must be at least 32.


Finally, you need to pass the name of the ChessBase file you want to be
split, making sure to include the ".CBF" suffix.

CESPLIT is pretty picky about the syntax of the options, so if you
get an error message, check to make sure you are using the proper spellings,
punctuation and spacing.


Examples:

To produce files of a size suitable for Fritz, try something like this:

CBSPLIT -number=5000 c:\FRITZ3\BIG.CBF
                                   
                                   
To fit the same database on several HD 3 1/2" floppy disks:

CBSPLIT -size=1400 c:\FRITZ\BIG.CBF

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